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How can I condense files to send to a non-Mac person?


(*_*)
iMac
Mac OS X 10.6.x -

Without specifications of your recipients' computers and OSes, I assume for a moment that they are running Windows on a Windows box. Likewise, I assume that by 'condensing' you mean compressing, and by 'sending' using email.

If my assumptions are workable, the most readily available option to you would be to zip-compress the relevant files, which you can do from within the Finder: select the file(s) you want to send, Control (or right) click them and select 'Create Archive of...' from the popup menu. Then attach the resultant zip files (created at the same level or in the same folder as the original) to your email. You may want to configure your email program to send attachments using Base64/Mime encoding and Windows file name extensions.

To access the archives your recipients need an 'unzip' utility, which is not included with Windows, but many freeware versions of which are readily available.

If my assumptions missed one or more marks, please post back here with the details.

Thank you for informative (and understanding) reply. I can do what you suggest as the sender, but, alas, my Windows-friends would not know how to open them. I was thinking of a compression that when clicked would open the file automatically. Would using Base64/Mime encoding solve this, and if so, how would I go about finding the recipe?
(*_*)

You're looking at something like a self-extracting archive (.sea), which adds a (clickable) decompression program to the archive. Googling for .sea returns many commercial and freeware options among which I'm sure you can find something suitable.

That said, a problem with such self-extracting archives intended for Windows recipients is that they are out of necessity '.exe' (= program) files just like many viruses, and consequently stand a good chance of being removed by anti-virus measures somewhere along the way. Still, nothing will stop you from giving it a shot. The alternative is that you educate your recipients in the use of decompressing programs so they can deal with your and others' archive attachments.

The encoding I mentioned is needed to allow email data to be sent along lines that only handle ASCII characters, and is different from compressing the data (although frequently combined with it to offset the size increase caused by encoding). The Base64 encoding is recommended for Windows recipients.

most email programs automatically base-64 encode (transparently) files as attachments. Maybe you can just mail it to yourself and let your email programs do the work?

You're right about the encoding being transparent, but Base64 isn't necessarily the default setting, hence my comment to check this.

Stuffit makes Windows self-extracting compression files as well.

Indeed, this is one of the options the Google search listed above comes up with. The OP's requirement is for a Mac utility that can make a self-extracting archive for Windows, and StuffIt (commercial) fits that bill. I haven't done an exhaustive search for it, but there may not be (Mac) freeware utilities that can do this. Alternatively, there are Windows freeware utilities which will require a Windows environment on the Mac.

And alternatively to the the alternative, there are many Windows extractors (some free, some not) that the recipients of original poster's acrchives could utilize to unzip an archive that was compressed on the sender's Mac.

I did a quick search on Version Tracker/Windows and the newest "unzippers" are all shareware (i.e., not free), but there were some ads for "free" ones as well.

Thanks to all of you for your thoughts. I am going to go down the whole list and see what I can come up with. Happy Holidays!!