changes made to original attachment

[hilary]

Sorry about the double post, I accidentally posted in the
Word group.

I know this sounds really odd, but here goes:

I am using Office 2003 on XP. When someone sends me a Word
attachment and I open it and make changes, and click Save,
it saves the doc in a temp file. However, it also saves
the changes to the original attachment. I'm not sure how
this is even possible, but it's doing it.

(As a side note, we recently installed security updates,
not sure if that has anything to do with this.)

My concern is that users may unknowingly make changes to
original attachments...a potentially dangerous situation.

Any ideas are appreciated.

Thanks!

Hilary

 

[hilary]

Hi Sue.

Office 2000 doesn't do that though, only 2003...

Hilary

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

That's the way Outlook has always worked. If the user saves changes to the
attachment and then saves the message, the changes are saved in the
attachment to the message. In a sense, it's not that different from the user
being able to edit the text of the email message itself. If you want an
uneditable attachment, protect the document or use a .pdf file.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

It has been my experience that all versions of Outlook work this way, as
long as you (a) save the file and (b) save the message after the attachment
has been updated.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Hilary]

Hi Sue.

Perhaps I didn't explain the problem well. When I open an
attachment sent to me by someone using Office 2000, the
attachment does NOT open read only. So, if I were to open
the attachment, make changes, then click save, it would
make changes to the actual Word doc attached to the email.

However, if I open, make changes to, then click save on an
attachment sent to me by a user using Word 2003, the doc
opens as Read Only and the Save As dialog opens and I am
asked to save the file. Thus, when I make changes to the
doc, it is NOT affecting the original doc in the
attachment.

Hope that helps.

Thanks!

Hilary

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You explained it fine, but as I said, that's not the way it works way for
me. Perhaps you're opening the attachment in the second case from the
preview pane? If you want to be able to save changes back to the message,
you need to open the message and run the file attachment from the open
message.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers