E-mail: Distributing Files
I want to send a file to lots of people or a large file to one person.
How do I do this?
In the case of a small file and a few recipients it may be fine to just send it as an attachment to all of the people. In the case of a large file, or a lot of recipients it may be better to put the file somewhere where the recipients can obtain it, and tell the recipients where it is.
There are three ways of doing this:
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Department or Research Group shared drive:
- works for members of your department.
- works for members of your research group if you have a shared drive.
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- works for all of the above and for other groups of members of the University.
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- works for all of the above and anyone outside the University. You must consider making sure that the data is secure.
You may also want to see Which should I use?
Department or Research Group Shared Drive
If it is members of your department, and the file is not too confidential, you can put the file on your department shared drive (under Windows 7 available under Computer; under Windows XP often available as a Y: drive) and tell people where it is. You can copy the contents of the Address entry in Windows Explorer (select the Address entry and press Ctrl+C) and then paste into the e-mail (press Ctrl+V) and say (for example) look in Y:\department\folder\folder for the file called readme.doc (or whatever).
You can also have folders in your shared drive only accessible to some of the people in your department. Contact your IT Support staff for further details.
Rather than get in a mess, it would be a good idea if you haven't already, to design a folder structure for your department shared drive, and to decide how you are going to ensure it is not full of clutter and that once finished with these files are deleted.
Research Groups can apply for Staff Shared file store. Groups of Staff and Students (or Groups of Students) can apply for Group Shared file store.
Staff wishing to distribute teaching materials to students should use the Learn server.
Intranet
Another option is to store the file on the Intranet; this will work for people in your department or for wider groups of members of the University. There are three places where you can store your file: Where it is accessible to all members of the University, Where it is accessible to all members of your department, and Where it is accessible to a restricted group of members of the University; in the latter case you may have to create your own restricted area.
To put the file on the Intranet, from the Start menu select Programs, then select University IT Services then select Publish to Intranet. Some users may have this mapped as an I: drive. You will see a folder with the same name as your user id. Double click it to open it.
Choose the required folder, and navigate to where you want the file to be stored. You can drag and drop or copy and paste the file.
To set up the link, click on this link to open the Intranet in a web browser. Depending on whether your department is non-academic or academic, click on the relevant link. Navigate to your department. You will then be given the option of selecting a link for which of the three possibilities (University wide, Department wide, or Restricted) - click on the relevant link. Continue to navigate to the relevant folder and then right-click the link to the relevant file (Mac OS X usrs use Command+click). From the pop-up menu select Copy Shortcut (Mac OS X users select Copy Link). In your e-mail message Paste (Windows users can press Ctrl+V) the shortcut URL.
In either case you as a department will have to think about how you organise sub-folders in your Y: drive or Intranet, and how you ensure that old data is removed.
Individual Web Space
Individual web space can be a convenient way to transfer information between the University and third parties. If personal or sensitive information (all data covered by the Data Protection Act (1988)) needs to be transferred to a third party location, IT Services recommends that this be created in the form of a self-decrypting archive and uploaded to individual web space. Password information should never be made available on individual web space or communicated via e-mail; it is advised that passwords are provided either in person or over the phone. In the Windows 7 service this can be achieved with 7zip.
If the data being transferred is greater than 1GB then contact our Service Desk at IT.Services@lboro.ac.uk for further advice.
Note: Individual web space will in future be restricted to quotas enforced on the Individual File Store, which will be set to 2GB by default.
Therefore once the data file has been received you should delete it from your Individual Web Space.
Steps
Move the file or self-decrypting archive into the webpages folder in your Individual File Store (usually mapped as your U: drive). Ensure that the name of the file has no spaces, is in lower case, and preferably has no punctuation marks in it other than full stop.
The web address you need to send to those who you wish to receive the data file is made up of the following:
http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/ then a tilde sign ~ (on my keyboard that's Shift+# next to the ENTER key) then your user id then another slash / and then the name of the file including any suffix, for example: http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~cccb/file.docx
Note: If the file name does have spaces in it, these will have to be replaced by %20, e.g. http://www-staff.lboro.ac.uk/~cccb/my%20file.docx
Which should I choose?
Which method should you choose?
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The Department shared drive (or Research Group shared drive) can be useful for files which are going to be edited by more than one person; they merely navigate to the file and double-click to open it. This is the only way you can have an Access database accessed by several people in your Department (or Research Group).
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The Intranet and Personal Web space have an explicit hyperlink which recipients can double-click to open and save, but it's not quite so helpful for files which are to be edited.
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You cannot share outside the Department with a Department shared drive.
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You cannot share outside your Research Group with a Research Group shared drive.
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You cannot share outside the University with the Intranet.
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You can share with anyone with your Personal Web Space, but you should consider making the data secure.