email attachments

[confused]

when i recieve emails i cannot open attachments what programme do i need to
open to open attachments please help

 

[Tyro]

That depends on what the attachments are. If they are Word documents, you
need Word. If they are Excel documents, you need Excel. If they are picture
files such as jpg's or gif's, you need a program that works with pictures.
You don't state what kind of attachments you're working with.

Tyro

 

[Bruce Chambers]

when i recieve emails i cannot open attachments what programme do i need to
open to open attachments please help

That would depend entirely upon the specific application used to create
each individual attachment. If you are unable to tell what kind of
files you're receiving, ask whomever is sending them what you need to
open them. Also, if you lack the knowledge to determine what kind of
attachments you're receiving, you shouldn't even try to open them until
you correct that lack of knowledge and are confident the files aren't
malware.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

when i recieve emails i cannot open attachments what programme do i need to
open to open attachments please help

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question.

Each attachment you receive is a file created with a particular
program. To open the attachment, you need have installed the same
program that created it, or some compatible program. And what program
you need to have installed can readily differ from attachment to
attachment.

So if you receive an attachment that was created with Microsoft Word
(a file with a name ending in .doc) you need to have Word installed,
or some compatible program like WordPerfect or OpenOffice. And if you
receive an attachment created with Excel (an .xls file) you need to
have Excel or some compatible program installed.

Since nobody has *every* possible program installed, nobody can open
every type of attachment he might receive.

Should you open attachments? That depends entirely on what the
attachments are, who sent them, and why they were sent to you. If
somebody sent you a legal document as an attachment, yes it might be
important that you open it (but legal documents are very seldom sent
as attachments). Alternatively if somebody sent you what he thinks is
a funny joke as an attachment (and that's very common), no, you
certainly don't need to open it, and (see below) it's safest *not* to
open it.

Finally, and perhaps most important, attachments can contain malware,
and therefore can be very dangerous to open. You often see advice not
to open attachments from people you don't know. I think that that's
one of the most dangerous pieces of advice you see around, because it
implies that it's safe to do the opposite--open attachments from
friends and relatives. But many viruses spread by sending themselves
to everyone in the infected party's address book, so attachments
received from friends are perhaps the *most* risky to open.

Even if the attachment legitimately comes from a friend, it can
contain a virus. I'm not suggesting that a friend is likely to send
you a virus on purpose, but if the friend is infected without
realizing it, any attachment he sends you is likely to also be
infected.

Personally I never open attachments at all, except from a *very* few
trusted sources, and then only when I'm expecting them. I recommend
that almost everyone else similarly avoid opening attachments.