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General discussion

MS Office email attachments will not open correctly

Dec 12, 2005 7:09PM PST

I'm running WinXP and up until last night didn't have a problem with opening for example an Excel spreadsheet as an attachment in Outlook.

Now I find no MS Office email attachments will open, the only way to get them to open is to save the attachment first.

I would be grateful if someone could let me know how to sort this weird phenomena. I haven't installed ANY new software or made any changes to my computer BTW.

Many thanks

Discussion is locked

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Re: can't open Office attachments in Outlook
Dec 12, 2005 7:39PM PST
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Office probs
Dec 12, 2005 8:04PM PST

Hi

Thanks for replying.

I have reinstalled Office but to no avail and looked at the previous thread.

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Sorry to read that.
Dec 12, 2005 8:16PM PST

My summary up to now.

- You can't open any Office attachment (xls, doc, mdb, ppt) from Outlook by doubleclicking on it. But you can open any other attachment (txt, htm, pdf, zip, gif, jpg, bmp) the same way. You can check this by sending yourself a mail with these 11 types of attachments (10 if you don't have MS Access installed).
- Opening xls, doc, mdb and ppt by doubleclicking on such a file from Explorer works without any problems.
- Uninstall and reinstall of MS Office doesn't change the picture.
- Removing Office with the Office Removal Wizard, then reinstalling doesn't change the picture.

Can you confirm all of this? And can you tell the exact error message Outlook gives?

Kees

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Office probs
Dec 12, 2005 8:21PM PST

Hi Kees

Yes, I've done all that.

I do not get an error message whatsoever, what happens is I receive an email with an attachment, I double-click on said attachment as per usual, the relevant program opens (be it Word or Excel or whatever), but the attachment doesn't open.

Thanks for your patience!

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You don't explicitely state ..
Dec 12, 2005 9:55PM PST

if only doc,xls,ppt attachments are effected or ALL attachements (like, for example, txt, htm and zip). That really makes a difference.

And what happens if you send that experimental email with its 10 types of attachments to or from Outlook Express? How many (and which) are opened correctly in Outlook Express?

And to/from hotmail (using Internet Explorer as a browser)?

Kees

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Check your security settings.
Dec 12, 2005 8:27PM PST

I didn't catch what version of Outlook, but sometimes it's in Tools, Options, Security. A setting is there to prevent launching the attachments.

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Security settings
Dec 12, 2005 10:55PM PST

I switched off Attachment Security and it worked a treat, but I still cannot understand how it seemed to have happened overnight, ho hum, one of lifes little mysteries.

Thanks to everyone for their help

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Having a similar problem
Feb 15, 2011 10:17PM PST

Hi there,

I'm having a similar problem, you click the attachent and the application launches, although instead of the document opening or a blank one opening you are left with a blank grey background. I suspect it's occuring because the Office Viewer software has somehow got onto my pc - how I'm not sure - but I suspect there's aome sort of conflict between say word and word viewer. How to solve it though????

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Re: conflict
Feb 15, 2011 10:30PM PST

In case of suspected conflict, it's best to uninstall one of the two parties involved. In your case that would be the viewer, I suppose.

Kees