outlook 2003 will not open attachments

[Terry G]

I am not able to open any e-mail attachments in Outlook 2003. When i double
click on the attachment in the e-mail i get a "The system cannot find the
file specified." error. If I use the "save as" option then i can open the
attachment. The files i am trying to open are files such as; Word, Excel, and
WMP attachments.

 

[Hugh]

Hi Terry,

Just wanted to let you know that I have the same problem - cannot open up
any attachment file types by either double-clicking or by right-clicking and
choosing Open. Doesn't matter if it's a Word, Excel, Powerpoint or JPEG file.

I've searched for an answer a few times on Google, with no success. One
person suggested "fixing" the relevant file associations through Windows
Explorer, but I highly doubt ALL these file associations have been corrupted
at the same time.

Sorry I can't provide a solution for you - I know it's an infuriating problem.

Cheers,
-Hugh

 

[Hugh]

Terry, it's me again, I've just fixed this problem on my end!

I had my Temporary Internet Items folder located on my external hard drive.
Whenever you open an attachment from Outlook, it apparently saves it to this
Temp folder before opening the file. Having this Temp folder on my external
drive was screwing it up somehow, so I moved it back to C:\Documents and
Settings\Hugh\Local Settings, logged off, logged back in and now it works!

Hopefully you've got your Temporary Internet Files folder moved somewhere
weird as well, and hopefully moving it back to its default location (or
default drive at least) should fix this problem for you as it did for me.

Cheers,
-Hugh

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Terry, it's me again, I've just fixed this problem on my end!

I had my Temporary Internet Items folder located on my external hard
drive.
Whenever you open an attachment from Outlook, it apparently saves it to
this
Temp folder before opening the file. Having this Temp folder on my
external
drive was screwing it up somehow, so I moved it back to C:\Documents and
Settings\Hugh\Local Settings, logged off, logged back in and now it works!

My recommendation for you in this case is to leave IE's Temporary Internet
Files on your external disk and change the location of Outlook's Secure Temp
folder which, as you observe, is a subfolder of Temporary Internet Files but
doesn't have to be. See this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817878/en-us
http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/securetemp.htm

 

[Patrick]

My recommendation for you in this case is to leave IE's Temporary Internet
Files on your external disk and change the location ofOutlook'sSecure Temp
folder which, as you observe, is a subfolder of Temporary Internet Files but
doesn't have to be.  See this:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817878/en-ushttp://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/securetemp.htm

I had the same problem with 2003 after a re-install. My problem was
that outlook was setting a non-specific path.

Before: \OLK70\

It would put the folded on C:, and would put the file in there that I
tired to open. I added in my own folder (to help me remember what it
was) and entered the whole path in the key C:\OLK_TMP\ to the reg key,
it worked like a champ.

Hope this helps someone else.