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Outlook 2003 hangs when I click on a message with an attachment

Having just upgraded from Outlook 2000 to 2003, I ran Outlook and had a few teething troubles which I got around by renaming outcmd.dat and extend.dat and finally got back into Outlook with all my messages.

Everything works great... UNTIL I click on a message with an attachment... everything then grinds to a halt and just hangs. No add-ins are configured... just seems to lock up...

Any ideas what to look for?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

upul007

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war1

Greetings, carled !

Outlook introduced a security update awhile where access to attachment is limited. You need to add the extension of the attachment to Level1Remove key in registry.

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/esecup/getexe.htm
or
http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/62314.html

Best wishes!

carled

ASKER

I know about limited access - but then it says "Outlook blocked access to the potentially unsafe attachment..." or something, rather than just hanging, didn't it?

I'm d/loading sp2 right now... lets see what happens after installation!

upul007

Yep. If it is corruption the detect and repair should fix it. Please run the update after you do this.

carled

ASKER

Sorry... forgot to say that I've already done a "detect and repair". Looks like it also does a hang on send and receive or something too as it was just hung up now and I hadn't tried to access any attachments.

upul007

Outlook 2003 has another issue where if you get a particular email attachment, it hangs on send and recieve. This is common with pop access. Only solutions I have are to use webaccess and delete the file. If this is the case you will be able to see Downloading message 3 of 20 (or whatever) at the bottom left corner.

The above is just an observation but please try the service pack first and see.

carled

ASKER

Right then. The service pack appears to have cured the access to attachments issue, but I still had another issue with outlook hanging when I tried to get back in after exiting. Cured it eventaully by uninstalling bloody winfax pro after seeing a post on the web about it - seems like winfax stops outlook shutting down properly or something - weird. Thanks for the help all.

upul007

Glad you got the first issue sorted out. The trick that i do is not to integrate it with outlook at all. After installing winfax, when you open outlook for the first time with outlook 2000, you are asked or told that winfax pro was found etc. Just cancel the installer. I think i read somewhere that outlook 2003 integration is not available. Not certain though.