The file may not exist, you may not have permission to open it...

[Gerry Schmidt]

We have a group of users who have decided to save e-mail messages that are
client-specific on a network share. Not our preferred method for them doing
things, but they have. If they go to the network share and double click on
the message, it opens without issue. If they close the message and try to
reopen it they get the following error: Can't open file: <file path>. The
file may not exist, you may not have permission to open it, or it may be open
in another program." This error happens on EVERY message. If they close
Outlook and reopen it, they can then open the message again, but again, only
once.

It appears that these messages have the same "issue" that PST files have.
Meaning if you attach a PST file to Outlook, then close the PST file, it is
still "locked" by Outlook until you actually close the program.

SO, does anyone have any suggestions on how to work around this problem,
short of requiring an entire team of users to exit out of Outlook and
relaunch it every time they want to reopen a particular message?

Oh, and though I doubt it makes any difference, we're on Exchange 2007 and
most of the users are on Outlook 2007, but even those few with Outlook 2003
have the same problem.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Can they reproduce the issue when using Outlook in Safe Mode?
Start-> Run; outlook.exe /safe

If so, it is most likely caused by an add-in that is installed. To
troubleshoot, disable them all and enable them one-by-one to find the
culprit.
See htpp://www.msoutlook.info/question/88

Also, do they have a virus scanner installed which integrates itself with
Outlook? Uninstall this integration part of their virus scanner and try
again; they'd still be sufficiently protected by your on-access scanner part
of the virus scanner. For more details see;
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/20

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

Can they reproduce the issue when using Outlook in Safe Mode?
Start-> Run; outlook.exe /safe

If so, it is most likely caused by an add-in that is installed.

Shouldn't that say "If not..."?

 

[Gerry Schmidt]

Roady, thank you for your help. You were spot on. We had an add-on that was
causing the problem. Fortunately, it isn't one they use very often.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Oops, of course it should...
Must be because I more often type; "Does it work in Outlook Safe Mode" ;-)