9 replies to this topic

[drkhrse]

Hi all.. Thank you for your time/wisdom/guidance.. A good friend of mine has recently received an e mail from a known contact with an XLS attachment, but is unable to d/l it. She has received similar attachment files previously, and has had no problem with d/l or opening thru Excel.. my first thought was a corrupted file, but here's where it gets weird..the same e-mail and attachment was forwarded to another known contact(from the original sender), who was able to d/l and open without issue. This person then forwarded said e-mail back to the original intended recipient(my friend), same problem. The attachment does not even attempt to d/l. She then forwarded it(after several attempts) to me, I have the same problem, and I in turn have been unable to forward the msg/att. The only common factor that I have been able to ascertain is that the msg came frm an optusnet email acc, sent to another optusnet acc, it will wrk, but thru hotmail it just wont work, indeed it won't even attempt to d/l the attachment...to my monocell brain it's just "curiouser and curiouser"...any ideas or suggestions will be appreciated, as I am frustrated by the apparent absence of logic..(or I am a complete moron, another strong possibility).. kind regards, especially if you can help...

[Ztruker]

Hi drkhrse, welcome to WTT. My first thought is something is blocking it. Perhaps a spam blocker, firewall or anti-virus program. Are you sure the file is malware free?

[drkhrse]

I cant d/l it to scan, but it is just a spreadsheet document for basketball, nothing suspicious in that regard., I even attempted to d/l with all security disabled, same result..

[appleoddity]

It could be a problem in how the message is attached... If one of the user's is using a certain type of mail client it may compose the message differently than someone with a different type of mail client, or webmail. I often have problems opening attachments from people who use Microsoft Outlook. It "embeds" the attachment into the message and only someone with Outlook can open it. There are changes to make to allow compatibility. But this could be a possibility also. In this case, the sender of the original message would be using a client such as Outlook, and you two would not be, therefore unable to open the attachment. Just something to think about. You may try to have the original sender of the message use a different e-mail account, such as a free Yahoo account, or hotmail account to send the attachment and see if it resolves the problem.

[Ztruker]

Does Hotmail have some kind of built in Spam blocker? Perhaps that is what is preventing the download. What do you see when you click on the attachment? In Yahoo, a window pops up saying Norton scanned it and there were not viruses. There are two buttons, Download or Cancel. I don't have a Hotmail account so can't check to see what it does normally.

[Jimbo1]

It could be a problem in how the message is attached... If one of the user's is using a certain type of mail client it may compose the message differently than someone with a different type of mail client, or webmail.

I often have problems opening attachments from people who use Microsoft Outlook. It "embeds" the attachment into the message and only someone with Outlook can open it. There are changes to make to allow compatibility. But this could be a possibility also. In this case, the sender of the original message would be using a client such as Outlook, and you two would not be, therefore unable to open the attachment. Just something to think about. You may try to have the original sender of the message use a different e-mail account, such as a free Yahoo account, or hotmail account to send the attachment and see if it resolves the problem.

Good point, I myself have seen the very thing you describe, many time I get e-mail from past church members and OE cannot open the file, but if I use Hotmail or another email client then I can open the file, you may want to try and do what appleoddity says and see if that will work.

[drkhrse]

Thaneoddityks Apll,,,??? wow I have no idea how that happened Thanks Appleoddity..I had never heard of this type of conflict.. I can sleep now

[appleoddity]

You must be typing on a laptop?

[Doug]

If the Excel sheet has any Macros, like self-calculating cells and such, your email client may block it... because it is capable of being "active". I have that problem with a large number of folks that I exchange spreadsheets with. What I sometimes have to do is to print out the spread sheet, take an image of it, and then paste it into a word .doc as an image. Works great for conveying the information, but loses the interactive components. Might not even be the email client, but rather the ISP's filtering. Hope you get it sorted. Doug

[drkhrse]

You must be typing on a laptop?

Even worse.. a normal keyboard on a beanbag...plus I was a little drunk