Can't open or save an attachment in Outlook 2003?

Published Fri, Aug 24 2007 20:54 | steveb

Client of mine uses the Fax Server in Small Business Server 2003 and has all faxes come into a "fax" user account.  One of the users today was telling me how she was unable to open any of the FAX.TIF attachments anymore and has had other co-workers save them as PDF files and send them to her.  Thanks to Live Search... yes, I launched Live Search, not Google, and actually found the answer, can you believe it?  Miracles never cease!  ;-)  Before I was side tracked there by that bit of trivia, I was saying that Live Search pointed me over to the TechNet Forums, yet another amazement for me since I hang out in the newsgroups much more than MS Web forums, well at least up until now.

Check out the thread at http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1482593&SiteID=17 and you'll have the answer if you have been reveiving an error along the lines of:

"Can't create file: Right-click the folder you want to create the file in, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu to check your permissions for the folder".

The error I was getting today was "Can't create file: FAX.TIF. Right-click the folder you want to create the file in, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu to check your permissions for the folder".  The forum post is dealing with PDF files so it looks like anything could be an issue.  The fax.tif is interesting because this office has used the fax server with email since SBS 2000 and I have never ran across one of the users getting this error.

Here is the answer in case the forum disapears on us (not sure of what the retention rate of the MS forums are or will be - I'll ask around.  In the meantime:

24 Apr 2007, 1:16 PM UTC
bmdvt90  Posts 3	Answer Re: Can't open or save a pdf attachment in outlook 2003 Was this post helpful ?
	Similar to the previous post, I resolved by doing the following:     1. Open REGEDIT.EXE and go to Edit -> Find... In the Find dialog box type "OutlookSecureTempFolder" without the quotes and locate that registry key.     2. That key will contain the actual folder location, and will look like:        C:\Documents and Settings\%USER_NAME%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK#\ (where # is a random letter or number)     3. Copy the location of that folder.     4. Click on Start -> Run... and paste the folder location from step #4 then click OK.     5. Windows Explorer will open that folder. Please, delete all files present.     6. Restart Microsoft Outlook and you should be able to open your attachments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's even cooler, is that "Netfelix" created a batch file to remove the temp files from user's profiles who are running into this a lot.  Below is what he posted: I've created a batchfile for my users that have run into this problem

del "c:\documents and settings\%username%\local settings\temporary internet files\(OLK folder name)\*.pdf" The OLK foldername can be found in the registry, as stated before, by searching for "OutlookSecureTempFolder"

This was a great way to end the day finding a great and accurate answer, seeing that there is hope after all for Live Search, and that the TechNet Forums had the answer in there while the KB articles were a bit lacking in that they kept referring to long file names.

Filed under: SBS 2003, Outlook

Comments

# dcj2 said on September 27, 2007 9:13 AM:

Been seeing lots of references to this problem while trying to solve it myself. The root cause seems to be file attachments with the same name (eg. if the user always receives messages with attachements named FAX.TIF). The first copy gets written to the OLK folder as "FAX.TIF". The next message stores it as "FAX (1).TIF". The counter increments each time up to "FAX (99).TIF". Once it hits 99, it can't create anymore, so you get the "Cannot create file" message. Yes, just pruging the cache will address the problem, I just thought I'd share some insight into exactly what's happening.

# Vick said on May 7, 2008 8:54 AM:

You are the best. Very helpful.

Thank You!

# locc said on May 16, 2008 12:57 PM:

Is this problem a windows or outlook problem?  Is outlook supposed to remove the file automatically?

# ephraim said on May 29, 2008 12:25 AM:

Thanks for this thread, it really works

# Fraser said on May 29, 2008 9:17 AM:

tryed this and it worked for me too.

# copa said on June 9, 2008 11:46 PM:

thank you very much

# PAGAN said on July 10, 2008 1:04 PM:

AWESOME !

# Scottie said on August 4, 2008 2:00 PM:

Awe---Some.....  Thanks for taking the time to publish the fix

# Mikzey said on August 7, 2008 12:03 PM:

Fantastic post - and I can add to it...

Our symptoms - 1 PDF attachment (could have been any file) refused to open for user A on a PC, but opened fine for user B on same PC.  This particular PDF was a form which was reguarly filled in, saved and sent by various people to this one recipient.

I checked out the Outlook temp folder mentioned above and noticed that exactly 99 iterations of that file were stored there, i.e. the files called:

anyname.pdf

anyname (2).pdf

anyname (3).pdf

all the way to...

anyname (99).pdf

(strangely, no 'anyname (1).pdf')

99 seemed a rather significant number... so I deleted 1x instance and tried to open the file again.

File opened fine...

But guess what happened when I tried to open another email with an attachment of the same name.... yep, got the 'permissions' error.

So I think the story is this: Outlook 2003 can only launch an attachment named 'whatever.whatever' a max of 99 times, because on the 100th attempt it gets confused over file naming (as it has no mechanism to delete the existing temporary files, it needs to be able to name the 100th one 'whatever (100).whatever' - but can't).

Fascinating huh?

But what a dumb error message... if this is still the case in O 2007, they need to fix it.

HTH

# Waleed Elbatat said on September 23, 2008 8:46 AM:

Thanks Mikzey & dcj2 for explaination

# Heero Yui said on November 6, 2008 8:55 AM:

thanks for the great workaround mate. experts exchange has a say on it too but i dont want to give me money for a simple answer (i also dont have money! (^_^) lol!) *** experts-exchange

# Cannot save the attachment. Can’t create file in Outlook. | Shogan.tech said on February 12, 2009 4:14 AM:

Pingback from  Cannot save the attachment. Can’t create file in Outlook. | Shogan.tech

# Can't create file when opening attachments in Microsoft Outlook 2003 | Greg Ellison said on February 26, 2009 5:51 AM:

Pingback from  Can't create file when opening attachments in Microsoft Outlook 2003  | Greg Ellison

# TJ said on February 27, 2009 11:14 AM:

WORK AMAZING THANKS FOR THE FIX

# Roger said on March 5, 2009 4:20 PM:

An easy way to view all the secret OLK folders is to revisit your C drive as a “network share”:

Start, Run: \\yourcomputername\c$

Then simply browse to your temporarily internet folder…

\Documents and Settings\%userprofile%\local settings\temporary internet files\

Now you can view and open any OLK## folders and delete the contents as needed. Turns out Windows forgets to protect the OLK folder if you approach it as a network share. BTW this works across the network to other computers you have admin rights to.

# steveb said on March 5, 2009 5:10 PM:

Thanks Roger for the administrative share idea!

Steve

# Prabhakar said on June 19, 2009 8:46 AM:

This works for me

# AndrewT said on July 9, 2009 2:33 AM:

Good fix

# Frik Brits said on August 5, 2009 6:12 AM:

This also happens if the "My Documnets" drive was changed by ur IT department to drive D: or so.

What u do then is just update the drive letter in that registry variable, restart Outllok and voila u can do what u want with ur attachments again.

# Dave said on August 5, 2009 11:45 AM:

How is it that this fix works for everyone but me? I have changed the location Outlook uses for the "SecureTemp..." folder. I have verified the user has "full control" permissions to the original temporary folder (Temp~Inter~...) and gave the user "full control" of the new location I setup in the registry. And about 2-3 hours after I made the change, the user said it started happening again.

In that amount of time, the user had only opened 3-4 attachments with the same name, so it's not the #99 rule either.

Any thoughts ?

# Ajit Dalvi said on August 11, 2009 7:29 AM:

Thank you very much

# Enrique said on August 12, 2009 9:42 AM:

Thank you very much - Made me look like a Star on the Desktop team ;)

# Travis said on August 20, 2009 12:57 PM:

Thank you for posting this problem and the solution.  It was greatly appreciated

# Jed said on August 31, 2009 5:23 PM:

Awesome. Perfect solution.

# Alison said on September 10, 2009 2:00 PM:

That worked perfectly!  You do have to empty the entire folder, not just the fax.tifs.  I'm just wondering how many times I'm going to have to do this for the user?

# Daniel said on October 14, 2009 6:58 PM:

Worked like a CHARM!

Thanks for the informations

# Heba said on October 15, 2009 2:38 AM:

Thanks, you save me, the error was at my boss laptop and it works fine.

# Eric said on October 22, 2009 4:11 PM:

This works.  Thanks.   Though it is rare to see, it is possible to see it again.  Is there a patch/fix from MS for this issue?

# steveb said on October 22, 2009 4:31 PM:

Hi Eric,

Not that I am aware of.

Steve

# Chip said on October 23, 2009 8:21 AM:

works great. easy awnser and easy solution Tx

# Hagi said on October 26, 2009 1:26 AM:

Thank you so much for posting that helpful tip steve. It help me this morning with one of my clients.

Leave a Comment

Name:
Website:

Remember Me?