Problem Opening Attached Excel File In Outlook (2000)

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Problem-When I attempt to open an Excel file that has been attached to an Outlook message, without first saving the Excel file as another file (a cumbersome task) on, say, my hard drive, Excel opens a blank (“grayed-out”) screen, and that’s it! When I either minimize the Excel screen, or close Excel out completely, and return to the Outlook message that has the Excel file attached, there is a message: “The system cannot find the file specified”. I can save the Excel file as a separate file at a separate location (i. e., either on my personal hard drive or a shared network drive), but this is a cumbesome task, and in many cases I don’t want to save the spreadsheets anyway! This does not seem to occur when I receive and attempt to open other types of files such as Word, Powerpoint, etc.

Any help?

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What happens if you File > Save the message before trying to open the xls?

I think Outlook saves such files in a sub-folder of your Temporary Internet Files folder – if you are consistently using something like a default ‘Book1.xls’ filename, there may be a conflict.
Try opening an existing (saved) file, File > Send To > Mail Recipient (as attachment). When the message window opens, File > Save, and close the message. Close the file in Excel.
Open the message (unsent and in your inbox), open the Excel file, then File > Save As should display the path to where your temporay files are saved.

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As I indicated (or at least I meant to), there is no problem when I first save the file to either my hard drive, or a network hard drive, and then open that file, as opposed to the unsaved file in the Outlook message.

This phenomenon has just recently started to happen, as in the past I had no problem directly opening such files from Outlook.

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Yes, I think I understood what you were saying – I just didn’t explain what I was trying to say very well!

What I think is happening is that Outlook/Excel need to have access to a saved copy to make it available to be opened. If the attached file is already saved, no problem. If it tries to save to a temporary folder and can’t, that’s when it all comes unstuck.

Are you only having the problem with Excel files, or does the same thing happening with Word files?

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Yep-only Excel. No other attached file types such as Word, Powerpoint, etc., have that problem, and whats funny is that it only started doing it a couple of days ago-could it be that my “My Favorites” or “My Documents” are full or near capacity?
Jeff

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Unlikely, unless you have hundreds of thousands of files, I think.

Have you ‘experienced’ a crash of late (Outlook or Excel)? I still get the feeling it is linked to the temporary folder. Did you manage to locate where yours is and what it has in it? You should be able to safely delete anything in it.

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No crashes. Where would I find this temp file if I go through “My Computer”?

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Depends on your operating system.
I’m on W2K and it is in:
C:Documents and SettingsLeif.domainLocal SettingsTemporary Internet FilesOLK5F3
Otherwise try the method I suggested in my first reply, or Start > Search > For Files or Folders, and search for ‘Temporary’ (without the quotes)

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Nope-no can find, although I did find and delete all of my cached internet hits (i. e., “cookies”). Still no help. Would it help if I sent you a file? Maybe forward you one I couldn’t open, as well as one I have saved on my machine?

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Probably would do any harm – send to the email in my profile.
Something to try:
Send yourself an email with an attached Excel file. When it comes into your inbox, check you can open it. Then do a search for that file – I would expect to see it show up somewhere (other than it’s original loaction if it had already been saved).

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I tried sending a file to me, and it did the same thing. What would I search for?

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I’m afraid I’m at a loss now. I would have expected you to have found a copy of the file somewhere…
It might be an idea if you could post your OS, network and mail server info – someone out there must have the answer!

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Hi. Check to see that the following option is UNchecked in Excel: Tools, Options, General, in the Settings section Ignore Other Applications.

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THATS IT-IT WORKED!!!!! Thanks a bunch, John, and thanks to all that tried!
Jeff

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I am not an Excel specialist and I don’t know why you receive this error but …

It is a very bad practice to open any attachment from within Outlook. You should not only save it to you HD but also check it with a virus scanner before opening it. Otherwise you are asking for problems.

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When I do this on my system running
Windows 98 SE
Office 2000 SR1a
I note that the temporary file is saved in a sub-folder of my Temporary Internet Files folder.

I have occassionally seen strange problems on various PCs which have very large numbers of files in Temporary Internet Fiels. How about clearing your temporary internet files from within Internet Explorer to see if this helps?

StuartR

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Tried that-still doesn’t work. Thanks anyway!

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Just a thought:
Can you open Excel files on your hard disk by double-clicking them from Explorer?

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no

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Ah-ha!
Sounds like it may be an association thing.
Check this thread – I suspect deleting the extension association from Explorer/Tools/Folder Options/ then recreating it solution may be the easiest.

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It may also be worth checking under Tools-Options-General tab and see if the Ignore Other Applications box is checked.
FWIW.

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I see this same problem with Word attachments opened from Outlook on certain PCs — not all. Word doesn’t have an Ignore Other Applications setting that I know of. Any ideas what the problem could be in Word?

I determined my problem is with Outlook since repeating the operation after the error does not produce the error — the attachment opens fine.

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Kevin,
Is there anything in common with the PCs it doesn’t work on? Do those users use Word as their email editor, for example?

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Well, all the PCs in question (and so far this behaviour has been reported by 2 users) are supposed to be ghosted builds — meaning identical. The apps are the same, the Office version (97 SR2) is the same, etc. Outlook is version 2000.

I have the same configuration and have never seen the error when opening Word attachments. My PC has 512MB ram and these other PCs have 128MB and 256MB respectively.

Regarding Word as email editor, neither user has this option set. Thanks for your interest in helping with this pesky issue.

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I have seen this exact situation with Word attachments in Outlook messages.

I think it’s a timing issue due to several things: 1) Outlook is a tremendous resource hog and takes too much time under certain circumstances (e.g. first-time loading — possibly swapping — the file save code??). 2) The OLE app opens before the file is spooled. The attachment is first spooled to disk with a random filename under the temp. internet filesOKLx folder (as others have mentioned). The OLE app (in your case Excel, in mine, Word) is opened and a filename passed to it — but that file is still being spooled and not available to the app.

If, after you get the blank Excel screen and Outlook error message, you try the operation again, it’ll probably work.

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