Outlook attachment problem

w/o knowing which Outlook you are running, I will assume that it is 2002. First check the Options tab and check the Mail Format tab and make sure that it is set to Rich Text.
Then check the Security tab and make sure that encryption is turned off. OR you could try to send the files one at a time. OR you go under Options | Mail Format and change to Plain Text. and resend. Problem also may be in Exchange Server or any mail filtering software you use in front of your Exchange Server.

hope thishelps or at least points the way. short of any of these working, more information could be needed

I assume that you speak about Outlook Express.
Check in options\send\mail sending format\plain test setting and set to uuencode.
Hope this help.

Unfortunately, neither of these answers worked and I have researched deeper into this to find several articles on the web concerning this problem and it appears to be a known of problem in ms outlook, however all the discussions and articles did notpoint directly to a patch or a resolution - does anyone know of a patch/solution to this?

I have now managed to send the attachment as a zip file which opens with the text intact and the zip opens properly, however, for some reason it is sent as one of twenty five separate messages, with the others being the same unreadable text as before and with the other attachments being unopenable.
Obviously I don't want to send the rest of these to the recipients - any ideas on this problems resolution?
I now have outlook mail options setup with plain text settings as MIME, text encoding to NONE and a tick in the Allow 8-bit characters in headers box.

I notice that your email address in AOL.com. This does present some problems for Outlook. There is an article in the MS Knowledgebase. See Q223911. If you have never used the MSKB, just go to Microsoft and click on support and then KB. then just type the Q# in the search box.
Hope this helps