OL appears to be creating directories and files. What are they?

[Dave Jenkins]

I'm just feeling my way with this, so if this subject has been covered
elsewhere just let me know and I'll head on over there.

We're on Office 2007 SP1, XP SP3.

I was doing a McAfee virus scan that was taking an inordinately long time,
and so I started poking around trying to find out what files it was slowing
down on. What I found was this:

Assume I have directory \dog, and that \dog contains a .ppt file. It
appears that at some time I have used OL to send a copy of the .ppt file as
an attachment to a message whose subject is "see attached". Now (long after
this email was ever actually sent), I see that a new directory has been
created:

\dog\see attached_files

That directory contains three files:

colorschememapping.xml
filelist.xml
themedata.thmx

And it is while scanning files in the \dog\see attached_files directory that
McAfee is spending all of its time.

So I have a few questions:

1. Is OL really the source of this new directory and its contained files?
Or is this an output of some other process?
2. Under what circumstances does OL (or whatever) see fit to create these?
(It does not appear that I get these artifacts *every* time I send an email
with an attachment ...)
3. Is there some way to keep these files from being created? What purpose
do they serve?

I've tried to contrive some tests to see if I could duplicate the file
generation, but so far I've been unable to do so.

And as far as McAfee VirusScan performance scanning the \dog\see
attached_files directory goes, I can't tell what it's really looking at - all
the scanner shows me is:

\dog\see attached_files\{06AAC ... (example)

There's no file in the directory whose name is "{06AAC ..." -- I have no
idea where those filenames are coming from. So what's it *really* looking
at? And why is it taking so inordinately long?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Brian Tillman]

We're on Office 2007 SP1, XP SP3.

I was doing a McAfee virus scan that was taking an inordinately long
time, and so I started poking around trying to find out what files it
was slowing down on. What I found was this:

Assume I have directory \dog, and that \dog contains a .ppt file. It
appears that at some time I have used OL to send a copy of the .ppt
file as an attachment to a message whose subject is "see attached".
Now (long after this email was ever actually sent), I see that a new
directory has been created:

\dog\see attached_files

That's the fault of your antivirus program. Outlook does not exhibit that
behavior. Uninstall your AV program and reinstall it without the mail
scanning feature. You'll setill be equally protected.

 

[Dave Jenkins]

That's the fault of your antivirus program. Outlook does not exhibit that
behavior. Uninstall your AV program and reinstall it without the mail
scanning feature. You'll setill be equally protected.

Hi Brian - thanks.

I spent a very unproductive hour with McAfee, and concluded that I would
have to examine this further myself. This is what I've found so far:

I have a requirement to provide copies of some of my emails to another site
(as displayable, formatted documents). These are being stored in a Notes
database from which they will be accessed and viewed. From within Outlook,
just before I actually send the email, I've been doing a Save As .htm file,
and I upload the .htm file to the Notes db. The .htm file gets generated
just fine, but as part of that process, OL is creating the subdirectory and
files that I mentioned previously.

Probably the simplest solution will be for me to save the email in some
other format that won't startle the Notes users, and which also doesn't end
up generating these auxiliary files I'm dealing with. I'll try some of the
formats supported by OL to see which ones will cause the least grief when
viewed from within Notes, but which also provide some reasonable formatting.

Any further suggestions would be gladly accepted, Brian - thanks.