edit menu - open in excel option not always available

[matchbox]

We have recently upgraded to Office 2003 and some users have noticed
that if you send a copy of a worksheet or word document, from within
Excel and Word resepctively, you are not sending an attachment it
appears in the body of the email delivered to the recipient. This is
fine....

The problem is that when it is received and they want to edit the file
- it does not always display the open in excel 11 option under edit. {There
is no option to open it in word and according to Sue Mosher word is probably
a security feature - which i suppose is somewhat logical}

Does anyone know why some of our citrix servers would be displaying the edit
option of open in MS excel 11 and others won't. While I'm not responsible for
our app servers i'm told they are all built to same spec (inc hotfixes)

TIA

 

[William Lefkovics [MVP]]

Could it be related to the message format the sender uses by default? Rich
text versus plain text?

 

[matchbox]

All of the test messages i am sending are in RTF

but i have noticed that when i open Outlook and try to edit->open in MS
Excel an email in the inbox it works fine. I can then do the same to an email
in the deleted item folder.

If i then close Outlook and reopen and do the same starting with the mail in
the deleted item folder the open in ms excel option is not available and
moreover not available when i try the same for the mail in the inbox.

If i close and reopen outlook i can replicate this without fail

any ideas?

 

[matchbox]

I take it back it is not location of the email that is important it may be
who the email originates from or whether it has been sent to you direct or
forwarded to you. either way there appears to be certain scenarios where the
open in ms excel 11 option doesn't always feature in the menu listings

 

[matchbox]

Right here's what is happening - if you open outlook and try to use the "open
in excel 11 edit menu option it will be displayed for all emails as long as
you have first tried to use the option that has not be forwarded. I assume
this is to prevent users from making changes to copies of excel sheets that
have been forwarded to them.

As you can still edit the email in outlook this is somewhat spurious. Does
anyone know if MS have done this by design?

 

[William Lefkovics [MVP]]

No ideas. That scenario, I generally avoid preferring attachments and not
content in the message body.

Interesting issue though.