Windows XP Hacks

Open Blocked File Attachments in Outlook and Outlook Express

Force Outlook and Outlook Express to let you open a wide variety of file attachments that they normally block.

The world is full of nasty email-borne worms and viruses, and everyone certainly needs to be protected from them. But Microsoft, in the latest versions of Outlook and Outlook Express, takes a Big Nurse, draconian approach to the problem; it refuses to let you open a wide variety of file attachments sent to you via email, including those ending in .exe, .bat, and many other common file extensions. (Eudora doesn’t!) The theory is that there’s a possibility that a file with one of those extensions may be dangerous, so you shouldn’t be allowed to open any file with that extension. That’s like banning all cars because some people sometimes get into accidents.

When you try to open a file with one of those blocked extensions, you get the following error message: “Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments,” and then you get a list of the attachments in your email that you can’t open.

Depending on your version of Outlook, Outlook Express and whether you’ve applied a Service Pack update to either of them, your version may or may not exhibit this behavior. Some older versions don’t act this way; all newer versions do.

The simplest way to know whether your version acts this way is to see what happens when you get one of the blocked file attachments. If it’s allowed to go through, there’s no need ...