Home
LWO Blog
Outlook 2007 Home
Free Stuff
Favorite Tips
Mail Accounts
Get Mobile!
Manage Data
Online Training
Outlook 2003 Book
Outlook 2007 Book
Search Outlook
Outlook Updates
Add-Ins
Search the Site
Feedback
Top Tips eBooks

Attachment Preview Tips (Outlook 2007)

Here's a collection of attachment preview tips and other things you should be aware of:





Stay Safety Conscious

Using an attachment previewer to peek at the contents of a file before opening it doesn't guarantee that your computer is protected from viruses and other nastiness. Outlook blocks you from previewing or opening certain file types that Microsoft considers dangerous.

Previewers also disable certain features of previewed files (scripts and ActiveX controls, among others) that could be used to infect your computer. Even so, there's no guarantee that previewing a file is 100% safe, so you should only open or preview files from safe sources.

A warning about previewing attachments.

Only Preview attachments from reliable sources.

Know When You Can Use Previews

The next thing to know about attachment previews is that they only work with message that are formatted in HTML or plain text. I don't know why you can't preview files that are attached to Rich Text Format (RTF) messages; you just can't.

Similarly, you can only preview files that are attached to messages you receive, not to messages you are composing. So if you are like me, and sometimes forget exactly what is in that file I attached to the message I'm sending to a friend, attachment previews won't help.

Don't Believe Everything You See

Some documents are dynamic. That is, they can change based on changes in other documents. This means that an attachment preview is not guaranteed to show the latest content of a file. So use previews to get an idea what is in a file, but if you need to be certain of a detail from the file, open it normally. The next section tells how.

Opening Attachments Instead of Previewing Them

When you receive a message with an attachment, Outlook 2007 gives you the option to preview that attachment. But you want to open it, not preview it. How do you do it? This is easy, but not obvious.

You can choose between previewing and opening an attachment in a few ways. It all depends on the way you click.

To preview an attachment, click the attachment icon in the Reading Pane.

To open an attachment, double-click the attachment icon in the Reading Pane.

   or, you can

Right-click the attachment icon in the Reading Pane. Select either Preview or Open in the shortcut menu that appears.

Like I said, easy, but not obvious.

Turn Off Attachment Previewing

What if you don't want to deal with attachment previews at all, and always want to open attachments when you receive them? You can turn off some or all of the attachment previewers.

You do this through the Trust Center, another new Outlook 2007 feature.

To turn off some or all attachment previewers, in the Outlook main menu click Tools, then Trust Center.

In the Trust Center window, click Attachment Handling.

In the Attachment Handling pane, set Turn off Attachment Preview to disable all the attachment previewers, or click Attachment and Document Previewers to selectively turn off certain previewers.

Note: Click here to learn more about the Trust Center.








From here you can:
  • Return to the top of this Attachment Preview Tips page.

  • Close this window to return to the page you came from before this.


footer for attachment preview tips page