Outlook Express Attachment problems

P

penny

I am getting emails w/ attachments with a message "OE
removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your
mail." I can't view the attachments and want to let the
sender know what the problem is.
 
W

Will Denny

Hi

Open Outlook Express - Tools>Options>Security - uncheck 'Do not allow attachments to be saved...' - restart OE.
 
K

Ken Blake, MVP

In
penny said:
I am getting emails w/ attachments with a message "OE
removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your
mail." I can't view the attachments and want to let the
sender know what the problem is.


It's not necessarily the sender's fault.

Starting with SP1, Outlook Express does this by default, for any
file type which *can* contain a virus. It's not a virus checker,
doesn't actually check the attachments, and this doesn't mean
that there actually is a virus there.

Such attachments *are* very risky. 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.

Personally I never open executable attachments at all, except
from a *very* few trusted sources, and then only when I'm
expecting them. But if you want to remove this safeguard, it's
easy to do so: go to Tools | Options, and on the security tab,
uncheck "Do not allow attachments..."
 
B

Bruce Chambers

Greetings --

Outlook Express' default security settings are simply trying to
protect you. OE has no way of telling whether an attachment actually
contains a virus or not, so it temporarily blocks any of those file
types that could potentially contain a virus. In Outlook Express,
Tools > Options > Security, uncheck the "Do not allow attachments to
be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus" option, assuming
you trust the source, of course. The wiser course of action, however,
would be to modify your list of unsafe files, as outlined in the KB
articles below:

Cannot Open E-Mail Attachments in OE After You Install SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q329570

Information About the Unsafe File List in Internet Explorer 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;291369

OLEXP Using Virus Protection Features in Outlook Express 6
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;291387


Bruce Chambers

--
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