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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.
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:
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.
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.
Related:
Ask Leo! - Internet Safety: How do I keep my computer safe on the internet?
Ask Leo! - Why can't I open attachments in Outlook?
Ask Leo! - How can I send someone an attachment, if it's blocked by their copy of Outlook?
Article C2860 - December 4, 2006
I had a similar problem. I could open attachments from yahoo on another PC but not on mine. If you have anti virus on your PC it could be blocking it. In your anti virus Check the Virus Controls; then Protection Against Viruses; click on Settings and uncheck the box that said "Threats in Web mail attachments". (Remember the name and path will be different in each application so you may need to find these settings in your application as this instruction was for Trend).
I found this solution at http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-33677-can-t-download-attachments-on-my-yahoo-email
Hope this helps
Posted by: Sher at April 7, 2009 9:20 AMMy virus protection wasn't the problem. I did some research and found that by upgrading my IE session to the new 8 program it was causing significant problems with MSN mail, etc. I removed the upgrade and now my system is working properly again. You need to go into Control panel, uninstall a program and then click on the upper left hand corner 'View installed updates'. Find IE8 and remove it. On Vista it will not show up in the unistall because it is loaded as an update. Just glad my mail is back to working again.
Posted by: Elizabeth Meci at April 9, 2009 10:09 AMI cant open my emails. It keeps saying Done. Please help me. I have so many emails to open and I cant get through. Do I need to change my email address. Please let me know what to do.
Posted by: Christina at April 9, 2009 2:00 PMThanks
I recently posted a comment about MSN e-mail not being able to open attachments. I finally got it fixed. MSN technician after three hours dicovered that my MSN Icon had a bug.Everything else in MSN worked perfectly. Even after a new download of msn it failed. A new persistent technician found that some sort of dll had to be deleted. She deleted it It now works fine. I don't know how or why it broke but it is fixed. I hope this will help Elizabeth Meci.Go to start menu find Icon that says MSN Internet. Open MSN with that Icon.
Posted by: william powell at April 10, 2009 3:29 AMI did have another backup Icon that one did not work either. "MSN INTERNET" ICON WORKED"
William Powell
When I try to open attachements, regardless of format, nothing happens. When I right-click on it and try to save, a message pops up and says 'Internet explorer cannot download, No such interface supported'. I don't know what that means. Can you please help?
Posted by: Frank at April 14, 2009 6:35 AMmy apple computer will not allow me to open any of my email
Posted by: angela at May 7, 2009 5:33 PMin my PC it takes ages to open an email attachment regardless of size. its a Vista pc with all latest configuration with internet security installed. any help?.
Posted by: Muhammad Khan at June 11, 2009 6:40 AMHave received to 2 attachments on E'Mail from what I am sure is from a good source.
Posted by: John Reynolds at June 18, 2009 9:15 AMI click on to Download and the box appears asking me to either open , save or cancel, yesterday I clicked onto open and the movement of files was indicated by images of them going from globe to file.
however where it lists the estimated time and download to, transfer rate. nothing is shown.
The attachments are 54.8kb and 22.5kb respectively
Am now trying by clicking on save and see what happens.
Last night when I first tryed to down load it was 8.0pm I started and it was still going at 9.00am this morning so I cancelled.
Hope you can help me.
John
I have EXACTLY the same problem as John Reynolds. Can anyone help us with this please? It is so frustrating and in my case, I urgently need to open documents (Excel documents and .pdf files) sent to me from overseas.
Thanks. Marian.
Posted by: MARIAN COOPER at June 19, 2009 8:48 PMNot at all pleased with the latest hotmail features which prohibit opening attachments. Other service can do it. Hotmail used to allow it until a few months ago. Maybe I should subscribe to yahoo or gmail ... what seems to be the problem? and don't tell me about the virus protection thing. I know all about that and here ae ways to screen for safe use. Feedback requested. Thanks.
Posted by: ED SCIULLO at June 29, 2009 6:37 AM