Michael13 said:
Vanguard,
Thanks for trying to help. I appreciate your time.
Regarding the 9MB file:
I tried selecting the attachment in the message header, then clicking
on File, but I don't have an "open" option. I also tried right clicking
on the attachment and selecting open. That lead to a warning about
attachments, which I bypassed by selecting "open" again. Then the
WinZip screen pops up (because the file was zipped) and I select "Use
evaluation version," as I have done once before. I then get a window
with the zipped file listed in the contents. Double-clicking leads to a
"Winzip Caution" window that states that my system is not configured
properly to view the file. Clocking OK causes the notepad to open with
what looks like an immeasurably long sentence--in Clingon.
Don't know what you're doing with WinZip. Outlook's File->Open knows how to
open .pst files, not .zip files. Zip files are opened by something else,
like WinZip, but apparently you are not using that 3rd party utility
correctly or expect the extracted .pst file to be readable by something
other than Outlook (and it isn't). Once you extracted the .pst file so it
is actually a file on your hard drive, then open it using Outlook's menu
(since Outlook, and nothing something simplistic like Notepad, is the only
application that knows how to read Microsoft's proprietary PST format).
Open binary files in Notepad is fruitless, too. Use the correct application
that supports the format used within the file.
Regarding the 14MB file:
I'm getting the 14MB size measurement from the size column in my Inbox,
so I think that's the compressed size. Here's what surfaced when I
right-clicked in the body of the message (which contains absolutely no
text, btw) and selected "view source":
<HTML><HEAD>
<META charset=US-ASCII http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html;
charset=US-ASCII">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1458" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; BACKGROUND-COLOR:
#ffffff"></BODY></HTML>
Any ideas at this point? Should I have the sender change both files'
suffix to .ppp and resend?
What you show above is just the HTML coding (text) for the HTML-formatted
portion of the e-mail. It is likely that it is encapsulated within a MIME
part unless it is the only part (i.e., there is no plain-text MIME part to
provide an equivalent version of the text from the HTML MIME part). If
there was an attachment, it would be encapsulated within a MIME part. Check
the headers to see if MIME encoding is specified.
Outlook can be very exasperating to see the raw data in a mail item. It
wants to show you the content that it will render, not all the content as it
was received. Once received, Microsoft converts the mail item into their
proprietary format and you never thereafter get to see what it actually
contained as transmitted. Have the sender mail you again and receive it in
Outlook Express if you want to see the raw data and the MIME encoding where
you can see the attachments in the body of the message. Sorry, I forgot
Outlook doesn't let you look at the *real* copy of the mail that you
actually receive. It sucks for this. Even saving the message out of
Outlook only gets you version after conversion.
Hmm, did the sender use RTF (Rich-Text Format) to send you their mail with
the attachment? Although there is HTML code, that maybe within a MIME part
for RTF, like the sender used Word as their e-mail editor and had Outlook
send it as RTF instead of HTML or plain-text.
You never mentioned WHICH version of Outlook that you are using. I know the
opposite condition can occur where you do NOT see a paperclip for an
attachment in the Preview pane but it appears when you open the message (in
its own window); see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/197091/en-us. Whether
it applies depends on WHICH version of Outlook that you use. Since Outlook
2002/2003 don't use a paperclip icon to indicate an attachment and instead
there is a list of attachments in the Preview pane (see
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=277793), you must be using OL2000, or
older. I'm probably too rusty on those old version(s) so maybe an Outlook
guru might step in here.
