• Can’t open attachment in Outlook Express

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    WSChuck Tucker
    AskWoody Lounger
    May 10, 2011 at 4:53 pm #476533

    An elderly lady friend using Outlook Express receive an attachment titled something like “attachment.pps (360K)”, but when trying to open it the error message said that there was no associated program. However, when I copied to her desktop it opened just fine with Power Point Viewer. What’s going on here?

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    • WSMedico
      AskWoody Lounger
      May 10, 2011 at 5:39 pm #1278852

      Perhaps the Power Point Viewer does not have a plugin to allow it to open in OE. See if this page shows how to open these files.

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    • WSMedico
      AskWoody Lounger
      May 11, 2011 at 2:28 am #1278877

      This is such an old arrangement, it is possible Power Point Viewer will not work with OE. I do not have any other suggestions at this time.

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      • WSScreen_Name
        AskWoody Lounger
        May 19, 2011 at 11:32 am #1280049

        The way the Power Point Viewer works is that you have to open the viewer then browse to the file and open it with the viewer. The viewer is simply that…..a viewer. It does not put any entries into the registry. Therefore, the viewer has to be opened and then the “*.pps” can be opened.

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    • joep517
      AskWoody MVP
      May 11, 2011 at 7:59 am #1278887

      Have you tried uninstalling and reinstall the Viewer?

      Joe

      --Joe

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    • WSsirpaul1
      AskWoody Lounger
      May 19, 2011 at 12:09 pm #1280062
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    • WSJerry Rhino
      AskWoody Lounger
      May 19, 2011 at 2:40 pm #1280097

      An elderly lady friend using Outlook Express receive an attachment titled something like “attachment.pps (360K)”, but when trying to open it the error message said that there was no associated program. However, when I copied to her desktop it opened just fine with Power Point Viewer. What’s going on here?

      This is a common problem and the solution is to edit the registry or run the fix program.
      PPSFix (v2.1) for Windows XP
      Copyright © 2008 Ramesh Srinivasan
      Website: http://windowsxp.mvps.org

      To edit the registry yourself:
      1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
      2. Navigate to the following branch:
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PowerPointViewer.SlideShow.11 shell Show
      3. Right-click Show and click Rename
      4. Type the word Open so that Show is replaced by Open
      5. If you have PowerPoint Viewer 2007 installed, repeat the above steps in this key, as well:
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PowerPointViewer.SlideShow.12 shell Show
      6. After changing Show to Open, close Registry Editor window.
      For .PPT files (Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
      1. Click Start, type regedit.exe and press ENTER
      2. Navigate to the following branch:
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PowerPointViewer.Show.11 shell Show
      3. Right-click Show and click Rename
      4. Type the word Open so that Show is replaced by Open command
      5. If you have PowerPoint Viewer 2007 installed, repeat the above steps in this key:
      HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT PowerPointViewer.Show.12 shell Show
      6. After changing Show to Open, close Registry Editor window.

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    • WSChuck Tucker
      AskWoody Lounger
      May 19, 2011 at 11:54 pm #1280155

      Thanks. I’ll give it a try.

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    • WSChuck Tucker
      AskWoody Lounger
      September 9, 2011 at 5:58 pm #1297180

      PPSFix did it! Thanks.

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      • tonyl
        AskWoody Lounger
        November 6, 2011 at 3:08 am #1305572

        Sorry to bump an oldish thread, but there was a similar problem with Windows Live Mail and Word documents. The fix is here.

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    • WSkelliann1
      AskWoody Lounger
      January 30, 2012 at 10:31 pm #1316877

      The error message I get is “there was a problem sending a command to the program.” I tried the above solution (docfix) but it didn’t work for me. Any idea what could be wrong? This is affecting my work because I can’t open attached word .doc or .docx that people send me. Am using Windows 7 Home, Windows Lilve Mail 2011, Woprd 2003 (which I prefer to the later versions). I downloaded microsoft’s converter that allows .docx to open easily in Word. What should happen is: I click the mail attachment. It opens Word and I can see and use the document. Or, it opens Word which instantly converts the docx to doc and opens the document. What happens instead is that I get the error message and then Word opens but the document doesn’t. Any ideas?

      Kelliann

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