I recently found that I couldn’t open WAV file attachments in Outlook 2007 on Windows 7. It was harder than it should be to find the answer to this problem, so I thought I’d publish the answer…
Outlook keeps a temporary folder for opening attachments and it is hidden in Windows 7. If a file in that folder becomes locked or corrupt, you can end up as I did… unable to listen to your voicemail messages.
The solution is simple, jump into the temporary folder and clean it out. But…
Even though I had switched off all of the “hide protected operating system files” options in windows, I still couldn’t find the temporary internet folder called outlook.content.
It should be somewhere like this:
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\F2OLM1OC\
But this last part “F2OLM1OC” is system generated. i.e. it won’t be the same on your computer. And, the folder \Content.Outlook\ is not shown if you simply go to your temporary internet folder.
So the easiest way to get to the folder and to navigate straight here… remember to replace “%USERNAME%” with your computer user name (the name you logon with).
C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook
You’ll find the folder in question inside that one. Or, you can go into your registry to find the location of that folder directly. You’ll find the entry here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security
Fixed!
Hello,
I did everything you wrote, but stiil can’t play my WAV files.
I erased the folder in question.
Brett, thanks for this post.
I could NOT find the “Temporary Internet Files” folder on my Vista computer – I got ALL the way to there, and then nothing.
Vista MUST hide it, because I was able to do use the Windows Search bar and type in “%Temporary Internet Files” and then it listed a lot of the files in this folder.
I then clicked on a pdf file, opened it up, and choose “save a copy” and that allowed me to click on the actual path which took me to the folder.
Really wierd that when using Windows Explorer, I couldn’t find the file, but when I clicked on the link, it took me right to the file! How frustrating!
Maybe your HKEY way will work, but I don’t know how to do that or use that – directions for future reference would be appreciated.
[...] And found this answer the best: http://www.brettg.com/2009/11/13/cant-open-wav-file-attachments-in-outlook-2007-on-windows-7/ [...]
@ERKY, sorry it sounds like you have another problem that is not the same as this issue. i hope you have found a way to fix it!
@Sean Goerss – yes this file is hidden and you can’t navigate to it. Sounds like you might need some IT help on this one…
Thanks! I was puzzled why this was happening. Deleting the folders in that temp dir fixed the problem immediately.
Can’t beleive this happened to me again! Lucky I wrote up the solution…
I found other write ups with this solution but it was so confusing. Thank you for making this simple! they say that if you cant explain something planely, than you don’t fully understand it yourself. Thanks for your help, this worked like a charm!
That worked. Used CCleaner to clean out temp files and BAM!