We use Google Apps for Education (Gmail) here for our corporate e-mail system. I have a resource available on a network share that I want to distribute to certain faculty and staff. I do not want to attach the resource to the e-mail: it's 30Mb and would fail on both file size and file type restrictions.
What I want to do is either attach shortcut file or include a hyperlink link to the resource on the network. Unfortunately, Gmail is making this difficult. Neither file:\\ links nor UNC paths (\\server\share\file) have been effective. This used to be easy to do with Outlook/Exchange. Is there any way to accomplish this? Any alternatives? I don't want to use a service that hosts the file online, as that would take a speedy in-network file transfer and force it to a much slower internet download.
I've also tried using a batch file (.bat) that will open the file, but attachments of that type do not work.
Update:
I tried creating the link via Outlook, but the Gmail web client strips it out. The link does work in Outlook, but few users have that setup.
Best Answer
I think your best option is to