Excel 2003 attachments open and show only empty cells when openedvia Outlook 2003?

[Rob Gordon]

I am having an issue with a few Excel 2003 attachments which, when
opened via Outlook 2003, is nothing but empty cells. However, if I open
the same attachment through Outlook Web Access on the same machine, the
spreadsheet opens fine and the data is still there. Additionally if I
forward the Excel attached message to another user, they are also able
to open the attachment and all the data is there.

So the one constant on all this appears to be local to this one specific
machine, when opening these particular Excel attachments using Outlook 2003.

The versions of Excel 2003 and Outlook 2003 are all fully patched, and
the Operating System is Windows XP Pro SP3 and is also fully patched.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

 

[K. Orland]

If the user logs onto another PC and opens an Excel attachment in Outlook,
does the problem follow them there? I'm trying to determine if it's
machine-specific or profile-specific.

It could be their cache is full. Outlook places attachments that are opened
from Outlook items in a SecureTemp
folder, which is well hidden under the Temporary Internet Files folder at
C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK*
(depending upon the O/S).

When you close the open attachment and the message is still in open or in
preview, the temporary file is deleted from the SecureTemp folder. If you
close the message or preview another message, the link is broken and the file
is left in the SecureTemp folder.

http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/securetemp.htm