I really think the mantra “share, don’t attach” is important and I keep drilling it home. It’ll take time but once people get their heads round it the benefits will become apparent and in a few years, it’ll be normal practice.
A forthcoming update to Office365 will make this slightly less of a chore when sharing with external people as they will no longer be required to have (or create) an O365 of Microsoft account.
This link will take you to the details. It’s not as technical as it looks so worth the 2 minutes it’ll take to read.
Here’s some points that I can think of right now that make sharing a good option:
- No files consuming email inbox capacity (your outbox + the inbox of every recipient – multiple times probably)
- Less consumption of your Internet bandwidth
- You can allow editing and collaboration (with versioning so you won’t lose track of what’s changed)
- You can change the document at any time and won’t have to re-attach and re-email it
- No email “ping pong” and losing track of the most recent and correct copy