Attachments are being added to plain text messages

[Michael S. Meyers-Jouan]

Last month there was an exchange of postings about a change in the behavior
of Outlook for messages in "plain text" format. For a period of several days
(in my case, from December 15 to December 19), every message received by
Outlook in "plain text" format had an attachment added to it. The attachment
is a .TXT file. The name of the file is the same as the subject line of the
message. The text of the .TXT file is the same as the text of the message.

Although this odd behavior stopped on December 19, it's Baaaaack. Beginning
yesterday (2005/01/09), all plain text messages have an added .TXT file as
an attachment.

There is no consistency in the headers of the messages. Some messages have
"Content-Type: text/plain" while others have "Content-Type:
multipart/alternative" and some have no "Content-Type". Some messages have
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" while others have
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable" and some have no
"Content-Transfer-Encoding".

In my case, I have five POP3 accounts, with the servers operated by several
different ISPs, so it seems extremely unlikely that this is caused by
anything happening before the messages reach my computer.

I am running Outlook 2002 (10.6515.6714) SP3 (that's Outlook XP) on Windows
XP Pro SP2. The only other process that "should" be touching incoming E-mail
is Norton AntiVirus 2004 (Version 10.0.13.3) with automatic Live Update (and
yes, I *DO* believe in scanning incoming messages, because plenty of viruses
get by my ISPs, and I prefer that they NOT end up in my mailbox; even though
I know better than to open suspect messages or open attachments, I've done
so by accident - and I'd rather NOT trust the file-open virus scan if I
don't HAVE to).

If any of the MVPs has any insight into what's causing this behavior, you
would be helping me and several other posters.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Tried it already with the Outlook integration of your virusscanner disabled?
Wether or not you believe in integrated virusscanning it could still cause
you the issue.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

 

[Michael S. Meyers-Jouan]

Robert,

It's hard to say whether disabling the mail scan makes any difference,
because it DOESN'T unless I also exit from Outlook and restart it. One of
the posters on Symantec's newsgroup suggested that:
"This is a known, though rather intermittent bug in Outlook XP. Rebooting
the system stops the problem (well, until the next time it pops up.)"

It may be that simply restarting Outlook is enough to clear whatever's
causing it.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. Disable all E-mail scanning. Attachments still appear.

2. Exit from Outlook. Verify (in Task Manager) that no components are
running. Restart Outlook. The unnecessary attachments no longer appear.

3. Re-enable E-mail scanning. No attachments appear.

For now, I'll simply try exiting and restarting Outlook if the problem
recurs, and see if that is enough to "clear" whatever is causing it.

--
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
Please reply to the newsgroup to keep the thread intact
E-mail first name at last name ".name"

Tried it already with the Outlook integration of your virusscanner
disabled? Wether or not you believe in integrated virusscanning it could
still cause you the issue.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

-----

Last month there was an exchange of postings about a change in the
behavior of Outlook for messages in "plain text" format. For a period of
several days (in my case, from December 15 to December 19), every message
received by Outlook in "plain text" format had an attachment added to it.
The attachment is a .TXT file. The name of the file is the same as the
subject line of the message. The text of the .TXT file is the same as the
text of the message.

Although this odd behavior stopped on December 19, it's Baaaaack.
Beginning yesterday (2005/01/09), all plain text messages have an added
.TXT file as an attachment.

There is no consistency in the headers of the messages. Some messages
have "Content-Type: text/plain" while others have "Content-Type:
multipart/alternative" and some have no "Content-Type". Some messages
have "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" while others have
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable" and some have no
"Content-Transfer-Encoding".

In my case, I have five POP3 accounts, with the servers operated by
several different ISPs, so it seems extremely unlikely that this is
caused by anything happening before the messages reach my computer.

I am running Outlook 2002 (10.6515.6714) SP3 (that's Outlook XP) on
Windows XP Pro SP2. The only other process that "should" be touching
incoming E-mail is Norton AntiVirus 2004 (Version 10.0.13.3) with
automatic Live Update (and yes, I *DO* believe in scanning incoming
messages, because plenty of viruses get by my ISPs, and I prefer that
they NOT end up in my mailbox; even though I know better than to open
suspect messages or open attachments, I've done so by accident - and I'd
rather NOT trust the file-open virus scan if I don't HAVE to).

If any of the MVPs has any insight into what's causing this behavior, you
would be helping me and several other posters.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

It is a known issue for Outlook when Outlook is running for a long period of
time (I'm not familair with the details but could be related to the
virusscanner) and restarting Outlook will indeed solve the issue.

When disabling the virusscanning a restart of Outlook is indeed required to
fully unload the add-in.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

-----

Robert,

It's hard to say whether disabling the mail scan makes any difference,
because it DOESN'T unless I also exit from Outlook and restart it. One of
the posters on Symantec's newsgroup suggested that:
"This is a known, though rather intermittent bug in Outlook XP. Rebooting
the system stops the problem (well, until the next time it pops up.)"

It may be that simply restarting Outlook is enough to clear whatever's
causing it.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. Disable all E-mail scanning. Attachments still appear.

2. Exit from Outlook. Verify (in Task Manager) that no components are
running. Restart Outlook. The unnecessary attachments no longer appear.

3. Re-enable E-mail scanning. No attachments appear.

For now, I'll simply try exiting and restarting Outlook if the problem
recurs, and see if that is enough to "clear" whatever is causing it.

--
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
Please reply to the newsgroup to keep the thread intact
E-mail first name at last name ".name"

Tried it already with the Outlook integration of your virusscanner
disabled? Wether or not you believe in integrated virusscanning it could
still cause you the issue.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
www.howto-outlook.com

Tips of the month:
-What do the Outlook Icons Mean?
-Create an Office 2003 CD slipstreamed with Service Pack 1

-----

Last month there was an exchange of postings about a change in the
behavior of Outlook for messages in "plain text" format. For a period of
several days (in my case, from December 15 to December 19), every
message received by Outlook in "plain text" format had an attachment
added to it. The attachment is a .TXT file. The name of the file is the
same as the subject line of the message. The text of the .TXT file is
the same as the text of the message.

Although this odd behavior stopped on December 19, it's Baaaaack.
Beginning yesterday (2005/01/09), all plain text messages have an added
.TXT file as an attachment.

There is no consistency in the headers of the messages. Some messages
have "Content-Type: text/plain" while others have "Content-Type:
multipart/alternative" and some have no "Content-Type". Some messages
have "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" while others have
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable" and some have no
"Content-Transfer-Encoding".

In my case, I have five POP3 accounts, with the servers operated by
several different ISPs, so it seems extremely unlikely that this is
caused by anything happening before the messages reach my computer.

I am running Outlook 2002 (10.6515.6714) SP3 (that's Outlook XP) on
Windows XP Pro SP2. The only other process that "should" be touching
incoming E-mail is Norton AntiVirus 2004 (Version 10.0.13.3) with
automatic Live Update (and yes, I *DO* believe in scanning incoming
messages, because plenty of viruses get by my ISPs, and I prefer that
they NOT end up in my mailbox; even though I know better than to open
suspect messages or open attachments, I've done so by accident - and I'd
rather NOT trust the file-open virus scan if I don't HAVE to).

If any of the MVPs has any insight into what's causing this behavior,
you would be helping me and several other posters.