" Screaming Eagles 101" wrote in message
...
Hi,
in my overview of messages I see different messages with an attachment,
but when I select them to see them in my preview pane the paperclip
icon in the upper right corner of the message header is not there...
--
Filip

Hi Filip,

I only have one email that came with an attachment. In the list of messages
in the top overview pane, there is a paperclip to the left of the item. In
the preview pane below, there is NO paperclip in the upper right because my
anti-virus eliminated the attachment, which contained "virus Win32/Swen.A
worm". (It purported to be an update from Microsoft, on the same day of the
month that Microsoft releases updates. Very sneaky! Microsoft does NOT send
update files by email.) That is one reason why an email would not show a
paperclip in the preview pane. The Overview pane sees that an attachment is
indicated in the header and shows the paperclip to the left. The Preview
pane does not see a valid attachment, so it does not show a paperclip in the
upper right.

Another possibility in OE is this menu item:
Tools Options Security (tab)[*] Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be
a virus.

Having that item checked would block any form of executable files. In your
later messages you gave an example of one attachment with a ".pps" file
extension. I'm not familiar with Power Point Show files, as to whether they
can write to disk files. The new ".ppsm" extension is a macro enabled file
type, so potentially could contain a macro virus. I'm not sure if OE makes
its own determination of what file types could potentially be unsafe, or
whether it relies on the security settings in Internet Explorer. Did you
recently upgrade to a new IE version when the paperclips vanished? (There
was a cumulative security update for Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, 8
earlier in June 2009.) OE uses IE for rendering the html in email messages,
and IE uses OE for saving and displaying MHT (MIME encoded versions of HTML
web pages) files. There are probably other interconnections between the two.

For test purposes, I have attached a "Have a nice day" text file to this
message. While this message is still in the Drafts folder, the big paperclip
is displaying in the Preview pane. I clicked the paperclip and can either
open "Test01.txt (84 bytes)" or "Save Attachments". I opened it, and while
open, did a file search for "Test01.txt", with these results:

1. A "Test01.txt" shortcut in the "Recent" documents folder
2. The original file: C:\Attach\Test01.txt
3. The opened file in folder: "My Computer" (In the History\Today area)

That third file in Search Results has the Internet Explorer generic "e"
icon, so that indicates there is some connection with Internet Explorer
when opening attachments in Outlook Express.

Have you tried sending yourself an email with a plain text attachment?

FWIW. --Richard