Outlook Express 6 attachments damaged or missing

Question

Attached PDF files are often damaged when received in Outlook Express 6 on XP Pro SP2 on new Dimension 8400 - and just as often are missing altogether - when I blind-copy myself or send emails to myself for testing. For instance, if I attach three files, only two may arrive and one of them will be damaged. Or if I attach one file, it may be damaged or missing when the email arrives. I don't mean OE won't let me open it - I mean there is no paperclip. But the original attachments in my Sent Items are fine. Damage to received PDFs is reported when trying to open in Adobe Reader 6, 5, or 4, or in the full Adobe Acrobat 4. Any of those will open the original attachment in Sent Items. Also, when someone else sent an attached PNG file, it was damaged when received in OE6, but when I received the identical email on a Win95 machine with OE4 (by leaving messages on server), it was fine.   I have tried all combinations of sending and receiving to/from three accounts (two ISPs), DSL and dialup, power-cycled the DSL modem, disabled McAfee VirusScan scanning of outgoing messages, temporarily disabled VirusScan altogether. I have sent attachments to this new Dell from Win98SE OE5 and Win95 OE4 with same result. So far when I send from the new Dell to those systems, the attachments are not missing or damaged, but I have tried this direction less often. This is not a matter of Tools/Options/Security 'Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus', since PDF and PNG are not on the list of file types that Microsoft ties to this option (but I've tried anyway with and without that option checked and get missing or damaged both ways). I changed server timeouts from 1 minute to 5 minutes with no effect.

BrickYard · Answer

Open OE, click Tools, Options and then the Security Tab. Look over the settings on this page. Message Edited by BrickYard on 01-21-2005 04:48 AM

martin1994 · Answer

Which specific Security setting do you have in mind? Here are my preliminary assessments:

* In my original post I eliminated "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus" as relevant.

* The Internet Explorer security zone is set to Restricted, and that in turn is set in IE to High. Is there a specific setting in a custom configuration of Restricted that you think might be affecting this? It's hard to imagine a setting that would let one of two very similar attached PDFs through and make the other disappear, or damage one but not the other.

* "Warn me when other applications try to send mail as me" (checked) seems irrelevant.

* "Block images and other external content in HTML email" (checked) seems irrelevant.

* "Encrypt contents and attachments for all outgoing messages" might be relevant if checked, but it's not.

* "Digitally sign all outgoing messages" (unchecked) seems irrelevant.

Thanks.

martin1994 · Answer

Aha! I think I've solved it, after about 14 hours of trying (almost) every combination I could think of, but I don't really know WHY this solution worked:

All I did was change from sending messages as HTML to sending them as plain text!

That should have absolutely nothing to do with whether PDF attachments are damaged or missing, but tests from all three accounts to all three accounts with multiple PDFs attached have worked every time. Go figure. Explanations are welcome.

I have not yet tested whether unchecking the Tools/Options/Security option "Block images and other external content in HTML email" would also let the PDF attachments through intact when the message is in HTML.

I also have not yet tested receiving the attachments on another computer, or sending attachments from another computer with and without HTML.

I can send attachments to myself successfully now, but of course that's not the point: I want to be sure my recipients get the attachments I send, and be sure I receive intact attachments from my correspondents. So I have more testing to do.

oldtraveler · Answer

Look to me as though your extra tight security precautions may preclude e-mail (particulary attachments) working well. You might relax those precautions and depend more upon your AV and your 3rd party firewall.

Windows General

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