"Read" view when opening attachment

[Juan]

Whenever i open an attachment sent through Outlook, it opens up in Read view.
Is there a way to disable this so that i won't have to click "Close" to
return to normal view?
thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Tools | Options | General: "Allow starting in Reading Layout view."

 

[Jeanne M]

Suzanne: I have read your identical and patient answer to dozens of inquiries
on this point. The problem many of us are having is that we've already made
that change (unticking "Allow starting in reading layout view") but as soon
as an email attachment arrives (Outlook 2003) that is in Reading Layout view,
it not only changes my default back to a tick mark on "Allow starting in
reading layout....", it ALSO changes my default setting on "recently used
file list" (Tools/Options/General) from 9 to the Word default of 4. I kid you
not! This has gone on for years. So I have to "Close" the reading layout
view, and then go to Tools/Options/General and fix both of those back to my
own defaults. In one of your prior posts you indicated that you use Outlook
Express. Maybe that's the difference? Any thoughts anyone?
What the h_()#$^_@)(U is going on ?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Perhaps there is some setting in Outlook that covers this? You might ask in
an Outlook newsgroup. Of course, the ultimate solution would be not to open
documents directly from attachments, but I can understand why people do this
(I do it myself when all I want to do is see the content, not edit it).

In any case, Outlook should not be changing your Word Options settings
(though I can't swear that it doesn't; it's certainly very arrogant about
making itself the default mail client every time it's updated), but there
are plenty of other things that could. Add-ins are the most common culprits.
I went crazy for years about an Options setting that kept changing behind my
back (luckily not a vital one, but I still found it annoying and puzzling),
and when I removed an unneeded add-in, the problem was solved. I can also
attest that every time I use Adobe Acrobat's PDFMaker, "Update fields" is
unchecked in the Print Options. So I think it would not be unreasonable to
look outside Word for an answer.