How To Send Exe Files in Gmail
Isn’t email great? Beaming messages and files all over the globe in a matter of minutes has always seemed pretty cool to me. But what about when you want to send an attachment that GMail (my email provider of choice) or any other email provider doesn’t like?
The Error
I was trying to send a program to a friend the other day, and when I uploaded my attachment and tried to send my message, I was greeted with this.
Let’s see…how could I get around this? I’ll put it in a zip file! They’ll never even know it’s there…
Now, I’m getting irritated.
The Answer
The solution to this came to me from one of my professors when he asked me to send him a program I’d written for a class: change the extension of the file! For instance, you could change the name from the_program.exe to the_program.stuff or something. If the email provider sees a file that has an extension it doesn’t recognize, it won’t know you’re trying to send a program (or whatever it is they don’t want you to send) and it should go through with no problems. You’ll just want to add a note to your message to change the extension back to what it was originally.
If you can’t see file extensions, you can unhide them by going into any folder (My Documents will work), clicking on the tools menu and then folder options at the bottom. In the middle tab, you’ll find a checkbox that says “Hide extensions for known file types.” Uncheck that and you’re golden.
By Bryan Castleberry
Image by Tim Morgan
Nice article! Here is an easier way to do it if you are just sending it to yourself:
Simple attach the file to an email message and press save. Now, you have saved that file as a draft to your Gmail account. No errors, no renaming!
OR.. you could just password protect the zip and send the password in the email body.. then gmail wont care whats in the zip
I think it is always better to convert the Executable file into RAR or GZ. These extensions are not mentioned in the algorithms of Email providers so we can exploit this!
no the option changing the file type and sending is not working…but plan that saving in ur account and sharing user name and password willl be the best….