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Summary: 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!) 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. • 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. "Note the magical word permanently - you can't open that
attachment in Hotmail. Period."
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:
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. Related:
• Recent Comments
There seems to be a new problem here, related more to Hotmail's virus software than anything else. It seems the current virus software update has screwed up the ability to scan .zip files, and the virus scan doesn't know how to even read them. It just pops up an error saying "File contains too many embedded zip files" and won't let you touch it. You can't forward it, can't download it, and it just sits. They've changed things enough that you can no longer forward attachments that the virus scan hasn't already given the okay on. I've gotten this on several occasions now, all very frustrating, and forcing me to use another email service just for attachments. I've sent a complaint to MS about it, hopefully someone will fix it quick. It only started happening in the past couple of weeks or so I think. Posted by: Steve at December 21, 2007 04:15 PMIn a related issue, I can't type in any message into outgoing Hotmail e-mails. If I try to forward a message, thast message won't go either. I send an e-mail, but the content is lost. How come? What can i do about it? Posted by: Frank at January 5, 2008 11:06 AMhow to open Doc. Exl. and other attachment from botmail. please gime a idea how open my picture attachment Posted by: manny sancho at February 21, 2008 09:33 AMLeo I contacted Norton live chat because I couldn't open email attachments in Hotmail. Their advice was as follows: IE/Tools/Options/Programs/Manage Add-ons/disable Norton Confidential. Open Norton and go to Phishing Protection and click ignore. BINGO everything works. Hope this helps someone. Posted by: Jules at July 31, 2008 01:09 AMI receive e mails with a photo attachment. When I open the e mail, the picture is a "gray block'". t is not with all e mails. I can open most of the pictures. Is there a way I can reprogram HotMail to open all photos? thank you Posted by: lynne legare at August 2, 2008 07:52 AMSo, is hotmail now acting as big brother, deciding what I can and cannot open in my hotmail? I cannot send myself pictures from my own cell phone, even though it is on my "safe" list? Thank you hotmail, you have forced me to set up another email account under another provider. I will not use hotmail again. This is BS. How dare YOU decide what I can and cannot open. Posted by: susan at August 4, 2008 06:00 PMSame question as Manny Sancho. Some picture attachments to me email come blocked in gray. they are not attached as JPEG. I cannot view these pictures. HELP Posted by: PSinger at August 9, 2008 07:03 AMI am able to open Hotmail attachments with Firefox that do not open with IE6, so I keep both browsers on my deskttop.I also notice that if I do not select the printer (even though I am not printing)to which my laptop is connected at the time, an attachment will not always open. Posted by: Judy at August 10, 2008 09:35 AMPost a comment on "Why can't I open attachments in Hotmail?":
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