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Outlook Express Attachments

By mrs_doctor_jones ·
I ran into an odd problem and am wondering if this is common or just a hiccup.

I was working on an email with attachments in Outlook Express 6.0 (on Windows 2000). I saved it to my drafts folder and closed it.

Later I came back to the email and did the following:
1. Deleted the attachments from the email.
2. Added the new attachments, which had the same file name as the old attachments (but the content had been changed).
3. Opened the attachments from the email and verified that they contained the new content.
4. Hit send.

However, when the recipient got the email, it still contained the old attachments and looking at the attachments on the sent message, they also contained the old content.

What happened?

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Just a theory...

by nepenthe0 In reply to Outlook Express Attachmen ...

I likewise use OE v. 6 in Windows XP MCE and XP Pro operating systems. I have never experienced what you describe.

If you used the 'Del' key to delete the attachment, this might be the cause. When I choose to remove an attachment, I 'right' click the attachment and click 'remove'.

Until today, I never attempted to use the 'Del' key, but after reading your post, I sent myself a test e-mail, attached a .txt file, and used the 'Del' key to delete it. When I opened the delivered mail, there was no attachment. However, I installed XP SP3 Apr. 29th (about an hour before Microsoft withdrew it due to some applications glitch), and SP3 contains 'rollup' patches for OE6. So I might not be able to reproduce your experience on this computer.

I suggest that, for the future, you 'remove' rather than delete attachments. If this is what you have been doing all along, obviously I'm not much help.

There is another possibility - perhaps you inadvertently hit the 'send' command, then saved it before the file appeared in the 'sent items' folder. Later, you edited the file in the 'drafts' folder, but your recipient already received the pre-edited file. OK, a bit of a stretch, but the best I can come up with on short notice...

Rick/Portland, OR

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Where does outlook express....

by mrs_doctor_jones In reply to Just a theory...

"store" files that are attached to emails that are in draft mode?

Most, if not all of the files that I email are stored on a floppy or thumb drive, not on the local hard drive.

When I hit "save" to save the message to the draft folder, where does it store that attachment?

In other words, could this have been some sort of caching glitch?

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The glitch is in the SAVE

by ThumbsUp2 In reply to Outlook Express Attachmen ...

Once you saved the draft, the attachments in that format were saved with it. Had you added a step between #2 and #3 to save the draft again before sending, the updates would have been saved with it and sent in their new format.

By the way, to answer your next question, Outlook Express saves the contents of the draft, including attachments, in the Drafts.dbx folder located at:

\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Identities\a-unique-identity-id\Microsoft\Outlook Express


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edited: forum will not allow me to post curley brackets around a-unique-identity-id

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