Outlook 2013 attachment problem

Joined
Oct 10, 2002
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Unfortunately I setup a few users with the new Office 2013. This one fellow gets a series of automated reports in his email each day, all from the same sender/email address. Each email has an attachment with a .doc extension. For whatever reason the message in the email says the attachment is in rtf format even though it has a doc extension. Now the strange thing is some attachments open up normally and are readable. But other emails show unreadable box characters in the attachment. I figure it has to be a bug with the new Outlook.

I put the sender in his safe sender list, but didn't help. I also saved and renamed the file to a rtf extension but didn't change anything there either.

Anyone else run across something like this? Know of a fix?
 
If you think Outlook 2013 is clobbering the attachments, then have the reports sent to a non-Outlook or (if security isn't an issue) an external mailbox -- Ideally have this happen in parallel, so you can compare/contrast the results. See what you get then.

Also... Are you certain that the file is an actual Word 2003 document file, and not just a file that was renamed with the ".doc" extension? Something like TrID can help with this.
 
not seen this, could test it

what system is sending the report?

can you test and have the report sent to you as well?

can you save the file to the desktop and open, does it only not open in preview mode?

is word 2013 installed or older version?

Does the email account have webmail access? If so does it open in there fine or save?
 
These are brand new pc's running W7 pro and Office 2013. I've advised the user to use his web mail for now to get those emails. In the meantime I told him to ask the company in question if they can send in another format, or if the files are really rtf files, then send them with that extension naming convention. Saving the file and renaming to rtf does not fix the problem. The attachments that are readable do appear to be rtf documents. Like I said some open up fine, but others do not. Hopefully I'll hear back on how this company is creating and sending these files.
 
In the source of the message, what's it show for the content-type, content-disposition and content-transfer-encoding headers for the attachment.
 
Been so busy it seems like a month or more has passed since I posted this. I haven't heard back from the user who is not here in the main office so I assume he has worked something out. I've plenty else to do so until he calls or complains again I'm moving forward. Thanks.
 
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