Not All Outlook 2003 Email Attachments Go Out

[Guest]

Hi. I have an issue with Outlook 2003 (with all updates applied) running on
a laptop that has Win XP SP 2 with all updates applied that has been very
confusing to me for literally over 2 years.

I have called Microsoft support on several occassions and they have not been
able to come up with a solution.

It seems like around 20% - 30% of the attachments that I send out do not get
received.

I can go to the Sent folder and verify that they were attached.

If I go to my yahoo email account and send the same attachment to the same
user they are ALWAYS received.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Outlook 2003 several times.

I have tried disabling the anti-virsus software (AVG) that I use.

None of the above have solved the issue.

Has anyone seen anything like this and have any ideas as to how I can fix it?

Thanks.


Rick Bellefond
RB Data Services
www.rbdata.com

 

[BillR [MVP]]

The Yahoo account they go out in is added to Outlook as a POP3 account?
Sending issues can sometimes be caused by a corrupt profile. Try with anew
profile. Disable AVG integration always - you don't need it.

 

[Guest]

Bill,

Thanks for responding.

No my Yahoo email account is used totally outside of Outlook.

If my pst file (which is pretty large and is about 1.5 GB) is exported and a
new profile is created and that old profile is imported into the new profile
the problem continues.

Would the sending issues have anything to do with large profiles? As I was
saying, the attachments seem to go out around 70% of the time.

Another thing that I noticed is that my internet provider is Time Warner and
I use their Road Runner cable service and that most often, but NOTalways,
when the attachments do NOT go out it is to someone else who also is using
Road Runner.

If my profile is corrupted is their anyway to clean it up?

Any ideas as to what I should do?

Thanks.


Rick Bellefond
RB Data Services
www.rbdata.com

 

[BillR [MVP]]

The best way to fix a profile is to create a new one via the Mail icon in
Control Panel. You don't do any exporting or importing - simply create the
new profile with a new PST and use File | Open to open your old PST then
copy everything over.
I'd test with a clean, new profile without anything copied first.

1.5 Gb is ok for Outlook 2003 as long as you are using a Unicode PST.

It could be a service issue or some sort of hiccup between Roadrunner
services. Are you using their email server? If so, you might try adding
another account from, say, Google and test with that when you have the
problem.

 

[Guest]

Ok, I created a new profile.

Where do I check to verify that my old (current) profile is using Unicode?

No, I am not using the RoadRunner email service. I have a spam service
called spamarrest and I am using their email service where my pop3 and smtp
settings in Outlook are

Incoming Mail - mail.spamarrest.com
Outgoing Mail - smtp.spamarrest.com

I just opened up a Google email account. Are you suggesting that I use the
Google email (pop3 and smtp) setting inside my new profile? If so, where
would I get my Google smtp setting from?

Can I set up a new Outlook email account where I can use mail.spamarrest.com
to get my email and whatever the Google smtp setting would be to send it? If
so, do you know what the Google smtp setting is?

Thanks.


Rick

 

[BillR [MVP]]

A new profile should be using Unicode.
Now that you have mentioned spamarrest I'm thinking that might be the cause
of your problem.
Info on configuring Gmail for POP is here:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273 you need to
enable it first.

Do you have a regular email account or does Spamarrest take over everything?
e.go. If I was to send you an email would I send it to spamarrest or to
.....?

 

[Guest]

I do have a regular email account which is (e-mail address removed) but spamarrest
gets in the middle of everything.

In Outlook in the email account portion, I have to set it up as

pop
mail.spamarrest.com

and smtp
smtp.spamarrest.com

Emails that I send out have the sender email address as (e-mail address removed)

I tried changing the smtp setting to
smtp.gmail.com

but then my sending email address was showing up as (e-mail address removed)
even though in the Outlook Internet E-mail settings (Pop3) screen I have my
user information showing my email address as (e-mail address removed)

On that screen for the login information I am enterring my spamarrest
username and password

Does that mean that I cannot configure my Outlook email so that it uses
spamarrest to retrieve email but NOT to send it?

As I have been saying about 70 to 80% of my email attachments go out. I
would think that either my emails would go out or they would not.

I guess the next time I try to send someone an email and the attachment does
not go out, I could configure a second email account using my Google email
settings and enable that account and then try sending the same person the
same attachment and see if they get it.

Spamarrest is pretty good at eliminating a lot of spam so I would hate to
abandon it but maybe I will have to. Hmmmmmm.

Do you have any idea as to why spamarrest is not allowing some of the
attachments to go through. It is definitely not a matter of file size or
type since I have had 13k doc files and 10K jpeg files not go out while other
files over a MB will go out.

Thanks.


Rick

 

[BillR [MVP]]

"Does that mean that I cannot configure my Outlook email so that it uses
spam arrest to retrieve email but NOT to send it?"

You could . Use the Gmail SMTP Server to send and the Spamareest to
retrieve. I'm not sure if Gmail will accept a different return address
though. You can set on a per message basis "have replies sent to".

I'd really try to not use Spamarrest for a while altogether. Just use your
regular account or Gmail one. I think Spamarrest might be causing the issue.
There are other Spam filters around. I'd look for one that doesn't use it's
own POP server so server settings aren't interfered with and set Outlook
junk Filter to high. Many seem to use Cloudmark. I use only Outlook's Junk
Email filter (which really needs an update lately).

 

[Guest]

After do a bit more checking it is looking like the real issue is not that
the attachments don't go out but that they person receiving them do not have
Outlook and are getting a winmail.dat attachment that they cannot open.

So maybe what I have is a Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF) issue.

I guess I can have anyone who has this problem of not being able to receive
my attachments to google, download and install a free winmail.dat reader and
use that to see the attachments.

Is there any way in Outlook 2003 to turn off TNEF so if I send an email with
a .doc attachment and the person getting the email has Eudora that they get
just get the .doc attachment without having to decode a winmail.dat
attachment?

Thanks.

 

[BillR [MVP]]

Are you sending in RTF? Simply change to html or Plain Text and they
shouldn't get the winmail.dat attachment (unless something is totally
screwed).

 

[Guest]

There is one person who I always send the email in Plain Text format and he
always gets the winmail.dat attachment it does not seem to matter if I
actually am sending an attachment or not.

Are there any other setting in Outlook 2003 that could cause that?

In the Mail Format I am using Word to edit the message. Would that matter?

Thanks.

 

[BillR [MVP]]

Word influences the problem but it's usually a problem sending in RTF
format. You could try disabling Word as the editor and see if it makes a
difference.

 

[Guest]

Bill,

Disabling Word did not seem to make a difference.

I have Outlook integrated with Microsoft CRM. Maybe that integration has
something to do with every email having a winmail.dat attachment in it no
matter what the Outlook settings are.

Thanks.


Rick

 

[BillR [MVP]]

It could be. Unfortunately I don't know anything about MSFT CRM.
It might also be an issue with the recipient or the type of email account
used. I know IMAP can sometimes show plain text emails with the winmail.dat
attachment if they have been modified on the server.

 

[Guest]

Bill,

It must be the integration with Microsoft CRM that gets that winmail.dat
attachment no matter what.

Thanks for your insight and suggestions.


Rick