e-mailing a database - error message

[Liz Martin]

I am currenlty using Access 2000 with Windows XP and am trying to e-mail a
database as an attachment. When I attempt to do so I receive the following
error message: Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe
attachments. When I have attached the database to a message in hotmail the
error message says that users may not be able to read the attachment because
it is unsafe. Can anyone tell me why the database would be unsafe and what I
can do about it?

 

[Albert Marshall]

You wrote

I am currenlty using Access 2000 with Windows XP and am trying to e-mail a
database as an attachment. When I attempt to do so I receive the following
error message: Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe
attachments. When I have attached the database to a message in hotmail the
error message says that users may not be able to read the attachment because
it is unsafe. Can anyone tell me why the database would be unsafe and what I
can do about it?

This is standard Microsoft paranoia. Access databases can contain code
that runs at start-up, so they are treated as potential sources of
viruses and the like. The fact that Word is a more likely carrier of
viruses is conveniently ignored.

The best way to overcome this is to Zip the Access database.
Alternatively you could change the suffix from ".mdb" to
".mdbStripOffThisBit" and tell the recipient how to change it back. I
think that should fool the system.

 

[Tom Wickerath]

Hi Liz,

In addition to Albert's advice about changing the file extension, you can
also change a registry setting to disable Outlook's "file whacker", as I like
to call it. The details are found in this KB article:

Cannot open attachments in Microsoft Outlook
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=829982

Note that this article includes the following, so it may not work for you:

You can modify the attachment security behavior in Outlook if you are using
Outlook in one of the following scenarios:
You are not using Outlook in an Exchange environment.
In an Exchange environment, the administrator has not configured the Outlook
Security settings to disallow changes to the attachment security behavior.


Tom
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:

I am currenlty using Access 2000 with Windows XP and am trying to e-mail a
database as an attachment. When I attempt to do so I receive the following
error message: Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe
attachments. When I have attached the database to a message in hotmail the
error message says that users may not be able to read the attachment because
it is unsafe. Can anyone tell me why the database would be unsafe and what I
can do about it?