Unable to receive attachments

No, .eml files are not safe. They are also used by viruses (for example W32/Brid.A) to spread to all items in the Outlook Express address book. The message appears if the virus protection features in Outlook Express 6 are used. Outlook Express will then use the mail filter list of Internet Explorer to decide whether a file is safe or not. The behaviour you described is independent to your antivirus software.

Here you can configure the virus protection feature settings:
Start Outlook Express, and then on the Tools menu, click Options. Click the Security tab, and then click to select the 'Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus' check box under 'Virus Protection'.

I would recommend not to remove .EML from the list of blocked extensions. As mentioned above some viruses use these files for automatical spreading.

More information about this feature:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;291387

I can see 'Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus' check box but then how not to remove .EML from the list of blocked extensions? Where to activate the list?

hongjun

BTW, my Outlook blocks all attachments other than .eml.

hongjun

Use the Control Panel to configure the list of blocked extensions. To add additional file types to be blocked or remove file types that should not be blocked:

1. Click Start, point to Settings (or click Control Panel), and then click Control Panel (or switch to Classic View or View All Control Panel Options).

2. Double-click Folder Options.

3. On the File Types tab, click to select the file type that you want to block or allow, and then click Advanced. If the file type you want to add is not listed, perform the following steps:
a) Click New.
b) In the Create New Extension dialog box, type the file extension you want to add to the unsafe file list.
c) Click OK, and then click Advanced.

4. Click to place a check mark (block) or remove the check mark (allow) from the Confirm open after download check box.

NOTE: You cannot remove the check from Confirm open after download to allow some file types. For example, .exe files are in the default unsafe file list in Internet Explorer and cannot be allowed.

I download checked on .htm and .html files and they are unchecked. Technically, they can be downloaded. Yes they are able to be displayed in my email but then I am unable to download it from Outlook as an attachment.

hongjun

One thing strange is, they used to be able to download as attachment but now no. I did not change any of their settings as far as I know.

hongjun

As far as I know the filter works only for attachments. That means if you recieve a mail as HTML-mail then it will be displayed in Outlook Express. But if you attach a HTML-file to a mail then the filter list will asked whether the file is known as safe or not.