We’ve all heard it about a hundred times already: “Don’t open attachments from unknown senders.” And yet there will always be someone who either has forgotten the last time their system locked up and stopped functioning or they believed their system was protected from viruses. But although administrators are constantly on guard they cannot prevent attachments from being opened.

Attachments which contain viruses are most commonly sent out denoted as executables (“dot exe” extension) and sometimes scripts. The reason is because unsuspecting users will expectedly double click on the attachments to perform some function which they thought would help them. Sometimes hackers will send links to malicious attachments knowing that Outlook does not screen out web site URLs by default.

There are many other types of files with unique filename extensions that can contain viruses. By default, Outlook blocks many types of files based on their extensions because Outlook cannot determine whether files with certain filename extensions contain viruses or not. The benefit is that attachments which do contain viruses are screened out before they are opened by anyone in your end user community. Unfortunately it also means that requested or expected files are also screened out.

Continue reading Troubleshooting Blocked Access to Email Attachments

Email attachments must be sent, received, opened and closed on a daily basis. When a user cannot open an attachment you can be sure that an administrator is going to hear about it. Sometimes there are problems with saving attachments; other times the problems show up when a user attempts to open an attachment.

Some error messages are related to Outlook’s attachment security settings. Other times the error message might be a result of a suspected virus as reported by the user’s anti-virus software.

The most common error message displayed will be something like:

“Cannot create file: file name. Right-click the folder you want to create the file in and click Properties on the shortcut menu to check your permissions for the folder.”

This error message can be an indication of a lack of sufficient permissions of the Temporary Internet Files folder stored on a server. You can fix this problem by configuring Outlook to use a specific folder for temporary internet files.

If Outlook 2000 is being used then you’ll have to make changes to the Registry. As always, before making any edits to the Registry you should always make a backup. That way if any errors are made then you will have a good working backup point that you can restore to.

Continue reading Outlook Cannot Create or Open Attachment

Sending, receiving and opening up documents as email attachments is as common as opening and closing doors on a daily basis. But sometimes documents do not open up and can cause much frustration to someone who is expecting an important document so that they can proceed with their business of the day.

If you are having problems opening file attachments then you might be in need of a converter or viewer. Microsoft has many converters and viewers to help you with opening up a variety of documents attached to emails.

There are even Microsoft-supplied import/export converters which support the ability to open non-Outlook mail. Converters allow you to open up documents created by other programs and to save Outlook files in other file formats.  Converters exist to allow you to open up such files from common time and information management programs.

Continue reading A Guide to Converters and Viewers for Email Attachments