Thursday, March 31, 2011

How Attached Are You?

Plugging in...

Outlook 2003. Attachments. Once you get the gist, it's easy to send attachments, until ahem, it isn't. Case in point: a client attempted to send the same Word attachment to one email address seventeen times. Why seventeen? Because the recipient never received the email, the SENT folder never showed the email was sent, AND the email was never bounced back with "return to sender".

After trying all the requisite actions: recipient put sender's email in safe senders list; sender copied and pasted attachment into body of email (still a no-go); checked known file types that Outlook 2003 blocks as attachments and Word is NOT one of them; sender emailed without attachment - success. Well, how does THAT help?

The Tutor went on-site and opened the offending Word document. A short, two page document that appeared perfectly fine. As a matter of fact, it was emailed as an attachment not long ago, and it went through. The Tutor noticed there were clickable website links in the document and disabled them by right clicking on each and selecting Remove Hyperlink. The Word document sailed through as an attachment! So the "live" links were the culprit. But why now, and not in the past, are the links causing the problem? Therein lies another Outlook 2003 mystery.

Researching the problem turned up this: the problem happens suddenly, has no apparent reason for the blockage, won't block all documents with "live" links. Myriad fixes were suggested, none of which solved the problem. The client didn't really care if the links were "live", they were in the document for informational purposes. That's fine for this particular scenario, but what if someone wants the links to be clickable? The Microsoft response online went something like this "we realize that blocking can at times be inconvenient, but ultimately security is more important". They claim any blockages are preventing potential malicious activities (phishing).

We used a work around, one which included NOT using a Microsoft product - Dropbox, a file sharing online product that does not prohibit any type of file from being shared, and not through email!

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, does it have "links", and is it turned on?

Unplugged

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