Outlook 2007 offers a number of ways to resize picture attachments. The most common way is to right-click on an attachment and select “Resize Picture.” This will resize the attachment to the size you choose. If you want to resize the attachment without resizing the entire document, you can use the “Resize Picture As” command. This command will resize the attachment only to the size it is in, not including any margins or padding.
Resizing picture attachments before they go out is one way to be nice to the people you are sending files to… there’s really no reason to send emails with gigantic picture files when the other person just wants to see the picture. It’s also easier than resizing them before sending.
On the Ribbon select the Insert tab and click Attach File.
Windows Explorer opens up. Select and double click the picture you want to send in your email. *Note: You can also drag and drop the picture into your email message.
Now that you have the picture attached in your message click the Include Dialog Box Launcher (Yes really is the official name for this little icon). Look where the mouse is in the following screenshot… yes, you have to click that tiny little icon.
Once you click that icon, the “Attachment Options” panel will pop up on the right hand side of your window. In the Picture Options section, you can resize the attached picture automatically to one of the pre-set sizes.
Notice especially the checkbox for “Show when attaching files”. If you check this, then the next time you attach a file, this side panel will show up the next time without having to do anything extra.
This comes in extremely useful when sending pictures that have not been resized, cropped, or scaled down from the original size. As picture files can get quite large this allows you to send them as a reasonable sized attachment.
