Outlook Attachments

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Sat May 8 14:58:33 GMT 2004 Outlook Attachments

The usual problem with attachments is just that Microsoft changed the defaults to NOT allow you to open attachments. That's easily fixed in Tools -> Options -> Security for Outlook Express. It can be more difficult for some versions of Outlook: see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q290497.

I also get complaints about "winmail.dat" attachments; these are just Outlook including extra formatting info for other Outlook users. See http://www.pchell.com/support/winmaildat.shtml and http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=138053

But I've also seen people unable to SEND attachments from Outlook. You are supposed to get a warning:

If you send an e-mail message that contains an "unsafe" attachment,
you receive a warning message that says other Outlook recipients
may not be able to access the attachment that you are trying to
send. You can either ignore the warning message and send the e-mail
message, or you can choose to not send the e-mail message.
 

However, there are apparently circumstances with some Outlook versions where no message is given but the attachment is NOT sent. This MAY be solved by sending the message text in plain text rather than Rich Text Format (see the "winmail.dat" links above), but I'm not sure this is all there is to it.

The better solution is not to use Microsoft products at all, but that isn't possible for everyone.

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6 comments

Thu Apr 21 21:21:45 2005: 360   anonymous


I had the problem with Outlook 2002 over Windows XP not sending attachments - found this posting and switched the mail format to plain text .... all is fine.

Interesting thing is in another user's profile on the same PC it works fine with Outlook still set to HTML format.



Wed Sep 17 12:23:19 2008: 4556   anonymous


(hi every one i have problem with sending 400kb attachment on outlook there is no limit of quota) i think its problem with registy. send me procedure step by step



Wed Sep 17 12:30:50 2008: 4557   TonyLawrence


Well, it could be MTU: try (link)

But I think it's ironic that you ask for a "step by step" procedure but you don't bother to give a complete description of your problem. We have no idea what happens when you try to send this - do you get an error message, does Outook time out? We're not even sure if this is specific to one destination, we don't know your OS, your version of Outlook.. but YOU want "step by step"..

Good luck.



Wed Sep 17 12:36:00 2008: 4558   anonymous


i am using winxp service pack 2. i have problem with sending 400kb attachment on outlook 2003 there is no limit of quota. outlook time out)



Wed Sep 17 12:39:48 2008: 4559   TonyLawrence


Then it does look like a network issue. Could be MTU as described at that article, could be your rouyer, your ISP.. I'd try fiddling with MTU and if that doesn't work I'd be looking to my ISP for debugging help.



Fri Oct 5 16:55:49 2012: 11365   TonyLawrence




Note that Kerio has this under Advanced Options, Misc., "Enable decoding of TNEF messages (winmail.dat attachments)"

Though I prefer to just ignore this junk..

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