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Q: My sister sent to me four MP4 video files that she had converted from old family films. I was able to view them and enjoy them on my computer without issue, but when I tried to forward them to other family members, the following message appeared on my screen: "Someone needs access to the files. People without access won't be able to open the files. Cancel or Send Anyway?" What do I need to do?   

— Ellen G., Vero Beach 

A: There's a good chance the issue here is not with the files themselves but with how you are sharing them. 

Video files can often be large. While most email servers these days can accommodate attachments up to 25MB in size, sending something that big is not advisable. This is because email servers often experience data transmission issues with larger files — not always, but it happens. Larger attachments can sometimes clog servers or cause other stability or encryption issues during the sending or receiving process, which can result in messages or attachments that arrive encrypted or inaccessible. 

Complicating matters further is the possibility that you are forwarding your sister's original email to your family members instead of sending them the files as unique new messages.  

Forwarded emails often include additional code in them that can sometimes break or corrupt the data found within their original content. Emails as a whole are nothing more than HTML files. If additional code gets added to them through the forwarding process, then that HTML can break during the sending or receiving process as well, resulting in lost attachments, text or data.  

This is why, you may have noticed in the past, that attachments sometimes disappear or text gets garbled when you send or receive a multi-forwarded message — this is why. And this may be happening here as well. 

So, rather than simply forwarding the original message containing four large video files to your family, the better approach would be to do the following:  

Save the individual video files you received to your hard drive and then create one new email for each video file and send it out individually instead, one video attachment per message. 

Alternatively — and preferably it should be added — would be to upload the video files you received collectively to a cloud-storage system and then send a private link to those videos to your family members in a single email.  

This way the files don't bog down email servers and the content will be available to you and your family whenever you click on that cloud-based link. Free cloud-storage services like OneDrive — microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage; GoogleDrive — google.com/drive; or DropBox — dropbox.com, can be used for this and each have easy-to-follow tutorials to help with setup and use. 

Untangling the web 

justwatch.com 

Netflix. Hulu. Amazon Prime Video. Disney+. Paramount Network. AppleTV. Streaming services seem to be everywhere these days and chances are you subscribe to one or more already. This handy, free service serves as a one-stop portal for all of them.  

Simply create an account and then connect your various streaming services to your profile — after doing so, you can watch streaming content from all of them in a single app instead of having to shift from one app to another when looking for something to watch. Browse for titles via individual streaming service or collectively through the site's search bar. 

Contact Eyal Goldshmid at egoldshmid@yahoo.com.

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