How do I send a PDF to an email?
Written by Cameron James·September 17, 2026Quick answer
To send a PDF to an email, open a new message, click the paperclip or attach icon, choose the PDF from your device and send. That works as long as the file sits under your provider's cap: personal Gmail and Outlook.com both stop at 25MB, and Gmail swaps anything larger for a Google Drive link while Outlook.com asks you to upload it to OneDrive. If the PDF is big, or if you will want to change it after sending, share a link to it rather than attaching it.
Key facts
- Personal Gmail accounts cap total attachments at 25MB. If the file is larger, Gmail removes the attachment and adds it to the email as a Google Drive link. Google Workspace limits are set by the administrator.
- Outlook.com allows 25MB for a standard file attachment, and up to 2GB when the file is shared from OneDrive as a link. It does not swap the attachment for a link automatically; you choose OneDrive yourself.
- Email attachments are base64-encoded in transit, which makes them bigger than they are on disk, so the usable file size is always below the headline cap.
- On iPhone and Android, Gmail and Apple Mail both have an attach control inside the message. The quicker route is often the Share sheet: open the PDF in Files or a PDF app, tap Share, then pick your mail app.
- WeTransfer's free plan covers up to 10 transfers or 3GB in any rolling 30-day period.
- An attached PDF cannot be updated or withdrawn once it has been sent. The recipient keeps whichever copy landed in their inbox.
- Turning an email into a PDF is a different job from attaching one: use Print, then Save as PDF, then attach the result.
The click path, on desktop and on a phone
On desktop it is the same three moves in every mail client: compose, hit the paperclip, choose the file, send. In Gmail on the web you can skip the file picker entirely and drag the PDF onto the compose window, which is quicker if it is already sitting on your desktop. On an iPhone or an Android, Gmail and Apple Mail both have an attach control inside the message, so that route works too. The quicker way is usually to run it backwards: open the PDF in Files or your PDF app first, tap Share, then pick Mail or Gmail, and the message opens with the file already attached.
Worth separating out one thing people search for in the same breath. Sending an email in PDF form is the opposite job: open the message, choose Print, then Save as PDF, and attach that file to a fresh email.
When the attachment is the wrong move
The cap is the obvious limit. Personal Gmail and Outlook.com both stop at 25MB, Workspace accounts get whatever the administrator set, and because attachments are encoded on the way out they take up more room in the message than they do on your hard drive, so the real ceiling is lower than the number suggests. Go over it in Gmail and it quietly replaces your attachment with a Google Drive link, which means you end up sending a link whether you planned to or not. Outlook.com stops you and asks you to upload to OneDrive instead.
The less obvious limit is that an attachment is a dead copy the moment it lands. Back at DataBees I lost count of the times someone quoted a figure back at me from a deck I had already fixed twice. A link solves that, because you can change the file underneath it, and Google Drive or Dropbox will do that part for nothing. Where I would spend money is on the documents that have to be understood rather than just received, proposals and reports and pitch decks: that is why we built LiveDocument, which puts a recorded video walkthrough next to the PDF behind one link and shows page-level engagement so you can see what actually got read. It is not a PDF editor, and if your recipient genuinely needs a file sitting on their own machine, attach it and move on.
The Bottom Line
Attaching works right up until the file is too big or the content needs explaining. Past that point, send a link instead, because a link can be updated after it lands and, with a tracking service behind it, it can tell you whether anyone opened it.
Written by Cameron James