Einstine said:
I can now access my work email from home using the Outlook 2003 client,
which is very nice and a great improvement over the web based version.
However, it hangs whenever there is an attachment for a bit and it seems
relative to the file size so I assume it is trying to pull the attachment
from
the server.
Is there any way to have it ignore the attachment unless I specifically
try
and view or open the attachment?
Attachments are NOT some file hanging on a file server somewhere waiting for
you to click an icon in your e-mail client to only then yank it to your
computer. Attachments aren't attached at all. They are *inside* the e-mail
and are just another section of the plain-text raw data in the message. The
section that is designated as a MIME part contains the "attachment" as a
plain-text encoded string. It is ALL just text in the raw format of the
message and it is up to your e-mail client to decide if it can render the
HTML tags within it to display it as an HTML-formatted document and if it
will support MIME or UUencoded sections of text that represents the
"attachment".
The reason there is a pause when downloading the e-mail with the huge e-mail
is that it will take longer to send all that traffic for the message (in
which the "attachment" is included) to your computer. How long a delay
depends on your connection speed. If you don't want to load the body of the
e-mail then configure Outlook to only download headers, but that means you
will then have to mark which messages to download and then tell Outlook to
download their full content. The message is just one whole message and the
headers are simply the first part of the text within the message that is
separated from the body of the message by the first blank line. So the
headers are just part of the text of the message just like the body is just
part of the text of the message and "attachments" are just part of the body,
and it is all plain text and your e-mail client has to figure out how to
intrepret the identifiers within the message to figure out if the message is
to be presented as plain-text content, render it as HTML, or delimit those
sections that mark "attachments" comprised on plain text that encodes the
binary equivalent of the original file that was "attached".
If you don't want to wait for those huge e-mails to download then tell your
senders not to attach large files to their e-mails. Instead have them
upload the file somewhere, like to a personal web page or file server, and
provide a link to that file that you can click on *if* you decide you want
to retrieve that file. E-mail is NOT a substitute for FTP. E-mail is
throttled to provide adequate response for LOTS of concurrent connects my a
large number of users reading their e-mails. E-mail has no recovery.
E-mail has no CRC or other means to rebuild the message (and attachments) in
case the content got altered during transmission. E-mail has no "resume"
for download, so you'll end up downloading the entire message if a previous
download fails or results in corrupted version getting received. It's
stupid to use e-mail in place of FTP or other more robust file transfer
mechanisms.
Also, if you configured your anti-virus software to scan your inbound
e-mails then you told it to interrogate your incoming e-mails - and that
takes time. The anti-virus program has to read through your e-mail to scan
for viruses before it can pass it onto your e-mail client. Meanwhile your
e-mail client waits for the message that it requested to retrieve from the
mail server. This can cause timeouts so some anti-virus products will
periodically send an X header (a non-standard header) to the e-mail client
so it got something and won't timeout. The same happens when you use HTTP
(web browser) to download huge files which won't get saved until your
anti-virus software has scanned that download. You could be "finished" with
the download, sit at 100% on the progress meter, and then have to wait
awhile until the anti-virus program gets down interrogating the download.
Don't use e-mail for file transfers unless you are willing to wait and
suffer unreliable transfers. Or configure the e-mail client to only
download the headers of your mails which means you then have to mark which
ones to download and then follow by telling the e-mail client to actually
download them. In Outlook 2002:
- Tools -> Send/Recieve Settings -> Define Send/Receive Groups
- Pick the group containing your account whose behavior you want to change.
- Click the Edit button.
- Pick the account.
- Enable the "Download item description only" option. Now you will only
download the header portion of your mails and not the rest of them (i.e.,
their body).
Now when you get new items listed in the message list pane, all you
retrieved was the header portion of the message(s). You will then have to
mark which items that you want to download (click in the column or
right-click and mark the message). Then you have to use Tools ->
Send/Receive -> Work with headers -> Process Marked Headers From -> pick
account(s). You could shorten the navigation by customizing the toolbar to
add a button for Process Marked Headers From, but having the e-mail client
download only the headers and then having to make the e-mail client retrieve
the rest of the message (actually it gets the whole thing again instead of
just the plain text content up to the first blank line that delimits the
header section) is a hassle. You'd probably be better off complaining to
your senders to get them to quit bloating their e-mails by inserting huge
"attachments" into them and instead provide you with a link to download the
file.
The above is the navigation and menus in Outlook 2002. Outlook 2003 is
slightly different but not so different that you cannot figure out the
equivalent navigation and menus.
