Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Opening attachments in Hotmail is easy - if Hotmail lets you. If Hotmail doesn't support the attachment type, Hotmail won't open the attachment. Period.
I am unable to open my Hotmail attachments. I am able to open attachments on other email services such as Yahoo, but not Hotmail. Why? (I hope your answer doesn't require me to open an attachment!)
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This article has been updated. See: "Windows Live Hotmail has blocked some attachments ..." - how do I get around that? |
Nope, no attachment's required.
The "why" is easy. Hotmail is attempting to protect you.
What to do about it, is less obvious, and a lot more cumbersome.
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As we all know by now, viruses and other forms of malware are frequently transmitted by email in the form of attachments.
The problem is that no matter how many times people are told "don't open attachments from untrusted sources" they do so anyway. Or they trust sources that they shouldn't.
It's what some people call the Dancing Bunnies problem; send people an email that promises them dancing bunnies if they open the attachment, and darn it, a bunch of them are going to open that attachment no matter where it came from.
So, Hotmail "solves" this problem by disallowing many types of attachments. If you get an email with attachments that Hotmail does not support, you get this message:
Hotmail has permanently blocked the following potentially unsafe attachment(s)
Note the magical word permanently - you can't open that attachment in Hotmail. Period.
And if you follow through and click on the "More Info..." link next to that warning message, Hotmail's online help is quite explicit:
Hotmail doesn't support all file types. If you send an attachment that Hotmail doesn't support, the e-mail recipient wont be able to download or open the attachment.
I'm assuming that "send" should be "receive" because you most definitely can send attachments from a Hotmail account, no matter what type, as we'll see in a second.
There are two solutions, neither of them pretty:
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Have the sender send the attachment again, with a different name, or as a compressed file. ".zip" files are fine. ".exe" files are not. So if your sender creates a .zip archive of the .exe file that he's trying to send you, that you can save, and then decompress back into it's original form and name.
Heck, just renaming the file is enough. Have the sender rename the .exe file into a .txt file and send that as an attachment. You'll be able to download it, and then rename it back to a .exe.
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Forward the attachment to a non-Hotmail account. Hotmail doesn't mention this approach, but sure enough, even though you can't open the unsupported attachments, you can forward them to a different account on a different service. If that service allows you to open the attachment, you've got it.
Hotmail's goal here is, obviously, to make it difficult to open malware in attachments by accident. You have to take steps of some sort; you have to think about it.
If you go through those steps, and you still get infected? Well, it was your own doing.
Article C2860 - December 4, 2006 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
April 14, 2010 5:50 AM
unable to download or save from my hotmail but it looks like it is, but when I go to open it's not their" the download box comes up and everything"
April 19, 2010 11:13 AM
Same as Vallee. I was able to open attachments until yesterday, Today, 19-apr-2010 hotmail decided that I can only 'save' or 'cancel' but not 'open' the attachments, no matter what extension or nature (pps, .doc, .xls, .pdf, etc) all the same ANy clue? Thank you!
April 22, 2010 3:59 PM
when I try to open attachments(pictures) in my hotmail, it says, internet is shutting down and I have too many add-ons. I have vista. What do I do?
April 22, 2010 6:33 PM
Dear ALL: here the solution for the issue with the attachments that cannot be automatically opened in Hotmail. Go to IE Tools - Internet Options - Advance, scroll down to Http Settings and uncheck http 1.1. and http 1.1. proxy. This worked like a charm for me. I've got Vista and IE 8 but it works with IE 6 and 7 as well. Cheers.
May 4, 2010 1:52 AM
Hi! All of a sudden my hotmail account is acting crazy! For example, there is a sale at Jessica London, the email sending address is correct, but when I click on the link in the email to take me to the sale, the window closes down. I am computer illiterate.
Also, have McAfee, and yesterday, it got all upset and said I had the trojan virus, and it was going to isolate it, so I immediately closed all windows open, ran the complete scan and it found nothing. So, consider me confused. Perhaps my 86 year old uncle is correct and the internet is "evil" : ) Help please....