"Can't open item" error

L

Lee Bryant

Regardless of which encoding I use for attachments, in most (not all) cases
Outlook users on our Exchange network cannot open any email I send them that
contains attachments. They get a "Can't open item" error when they try to
open the message. They can open mail without attachments fine, and people
outside our network seem to be able to receive attachments as well.

Any ideas? I have searched high and low for answers and found none.

I have tried re-cycling exchange (always makes you popular .. Not!) and
removing anti-virus from Exchange in case that was the issue, but no luck so
far.

I am using Entourage 2004 talking to Exchange 2000 on SBS2000, and the other
clients are mostly Outlook 2003. Other than this (which seemed to begin
after upgrading from X to 2004) Entourage works fine and seems to be
correctly set up.

Help!
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Regardless of which encoding I use for attachments, in most (not all) cases
Outlook users on our Exchange network cannot open any email I send them that
contains attachments. They get a "Can't open item" error when they try to
open the message. They can open mail without attachments fine, and people
outside our network seem to be able to receive attachments as well.

Any ideas? I have searched high and low for answers and found none.

I have tried re-cycling exchange (always makes you popular .. Not!) and
removing anti-virus from Exchange in case that was the issue, but no luck so
far.

I am using Entourage 2004 talking to Exchange 2000 on SBS2000, and the other
clients are mostly Outlook 2003. Other than this (which seemed to begin
after upgrading from X to 2004) Entourage works fine and seems to be
correctly set up.

Help!
Click to expand...

What sort of attachments? Any other entourage users on the network? Can they
access your emails? If not, send yourself an email with attachment and see
if you can open it. Also, how are you attaching - by drag & drop to a plain
text email to make an attachment, or by inserting an item into an HTML
message to make an in-line attachment?
 
L

Lee Bryant

What sort of attachments? Any other entourage users on the network? Can they
access your emails? If not, send yourself an email with attachment and see
if you can open it. Also, how are you attaching - by drag & drop to a plain
text email to make an attachment, or by inserting an item into an HTML
message to make an in-line attachment?
Click to expand...

All kinds of attachment (word, PDF, JPG, etc) are affected. There is one
other entourage user on the network (X, not 2004) and they can open my
messages without a problem. Attachments are being dragged into plain text
mails and also attached to plain emails using the button - same problem in
all cases.

I have no encryption on the mail or any plugins to entourage and I have
checked my exchange settings which are as normal. I am baffled....
 
B

Barry Wainwright

All kinds of attachment (word, PDF, JPG, etc) are affected. There is one
other entourage user on the network (X, not 2004) and they can open my
messages without a problem. Attachments are being dragged into plain text
mails and also attached to plain emails using the button - same problem in
all cases.

I have no encryption on the mail or any plugins to entourage and I have
checked my exchange settings which are as normal. I am baffled....
Click to expand...

OK, that's one step forward.

Next, Have you got the settings for the attachments to compress
automatically? (in the 'compose' pane of the prefs, make sure that
'Compression' is set to none, and in the message window, make sure that the
button below the attachment pane says 'No Compression').

Also, make sure you add the correct windows extension to the filename of the
files you are attaching - '.doc' for word, '.jpg' for images etc - windows
isn't smart enough to figure things out without the filename extension.

Finally, make sure that the encoding is set to 'Any Computer (AppleDouble)'
or 'Windows (MIME/Base64)'.

There is no reason why the attachments would be unavailable if you use these
settings. The fact the other mac user can access the mails correctly implies
that there's nothing inherently wrong in what you are sending.

If all the obove doesn't work, can you get a windows machine to drag the
received email to the desktop where it will produce either a .eml or a .msg
file. Attach that file to a new message and send it to me off-list. I can
then take a look at the message source as received and maybe figure out some
more problems.
 
L

Lee Bryant

Thanks Barry - inline replies below

OK, that's one step forward.

Next, Have you got the settings for the attachments to compress
automatically? (in the 'compose' pane of the prefs, make sure that
'Compression' is set to none, and in the message window, make sure that the
button below the attachment pane says 'No Compression').
Yep

Also, make sure you add the correct windows extension to the filename of the
files you are attaching - '.doc' for word, '.jpg' for images etc - windows
isn't smart enough to figure things out without the filename extension.
Click to expand...

N/a - what happens is that the messages themselves are inaccessible to
recipients, so they never get the chance to try to open the attachments.
Finally, make sure that the encoding is set to 'Any Computer (AppleDouble)'
or 'Windows (MIME/Base64)'.
Yep

There is no reason why the attachments would be unavailable if you use these
settings. The fact the other mac user can access the mails correctly implies
that there's nothing inherently wrong in what you are sending.

If all the obove doesn't work, can you get a windows machine to drag the
received email to the desktop where it will produce either a .eml or a .msg
file. Attach that file to a new message and send it to me off-list. I can
then take a look at the message source as received and maybe figure out some
more problems.
Click to expand...

No can do - Exchange client recipients (i.e. Outlook users on my network)
cannot drag my messages to the desktop, nor can they preview or open them -
but the strange thing is (a) it only happened since I upgraded to 2004 and
(b) it only happens with attachments.

???
 
L

Lee Bryant

Barry,

We may have discovered the issue, which you might want to be aware of as we
are probably not the only people with this combination....

We are using Exchange 2k, which doesn't have a catch-all email address, so
we have used the popular script from Michael B Smith recommended here:
http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2003/08/exchange_catcha.html .

It seems the combination of Entourage 2004 and this script may be messing up
the headers or the encoding of emails with attachments. This may be an error
in our implementation, of course, not necessarily with the script.

Thanks for being so helpful.

Best Wishes,

Lee Bryant
 
B

Barry Wainwright

OK, Lee.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you solved the problem.

Is it possible that you can send me one of the received messages captured in
Entourage (as I believe you said that another entourage app could read the
messages).

This may give some pointers as to what is wrong with the script that you can
feed back to the script writer.
 
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