Outlook 2003 attachment problem

[MeatSaber]

Hello all,

I searched the site high and low for an answer to no avail, so I apologize if this was answered before and I didn't find it...

One of our users is having a problem with attachments. He's running Outlook 2003 on a Win2K box, and all service packs and updates have been installed. The problem is, when he right-clicks a file and choose Send To...Mail Recipient, he recieves an error message upon hitting Send. The error is "The operation failed due to network or other communication problems. Check your connections and try again." If he opens Outlook, starts a new email, and attaches the file that way, there's no error.

To make matters even more confusing, this only applies to files associated with Office programs (.doc, .xls, and .ppt for sure). He's sent other file types without erroring out.

Any ideas? Your help is greatly appreciated...

 

[smah]

Is Word the default mail editor? If so, try renaming, replacing, or deleting normal.dot

 

[MeatSaber]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, that didn't work. Any other ideas?

 

[WANguy2k]

Try these. The second one looks promising. You may have to do a repair on Office.

http://search.microsoft.com/search/...e+to+network+or+other+communication+problems"

 

[MeatSaber]

Still no joy.

I guess I should clarify one thing. The user in question is running Office 2000, but is running Outlook 2003. This mix of versions is not the problem in and of itself, because up until yesterday, he had been running them for the past few months...

 

[WANguy2k]

Did you try reinstalling Outlook?

 

[MeatSaber]

Yep, that was one of the first things we tried...I've also uninstalled, deleted all registry entries for Outlook 2003, and reinstalled. Still no luck...

 

[smah]

I think that this is a MAPI related problem, but I'm not sure where. Does (or did it ever} this Outlook installation use the Personal Folders Backup utility?

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;240813

What happens if from within Word (or other MS Office app) the user does a File, Send To, Mail Recipient or Mail Recipient as Attachement?

 

[MeatSaber]

When trying to send the file from within the Office program, he gets the same error. And no, the PFB utility was never used...

If uninstalled and reinstalled Office on this computer, and still no luck. Are there any registry keys that are left behind after the uninstall that I might need to wipe out, to ensure a clean re-install?

 

[smah]

Try setting up OE temporarily. Allow it to set itself as the default mail client. This should set/reset all the MAPI related parameters for OE. Then, change the default mail client back to Outlook (within the Programs tab of IE).

My guess (& only a guess) is that the user might have inadvertantly started OE which had never been set up before. OE setup starts, user cancels, but something (MAPI settings) got confused.

 

[kparish]

I have ran into this problem before, what you need to do is go into your contacts and delete the "Display Name" for that contact. Don't fill in the field for it will be created automatically. After, delete the cached address when you create a new nessage and click on "TO:" and find that contact in your address book. This should correct the issue for that particular contact.

 

[smah]

??????????? Who said anything about a particular contact?