A little rant about Outlook 2003

Sometimes you just have to give it to Microsoft Software Teams.

A coworker sent me a program that is urgently needed for site test. No problem. He sent it out, and I received the file alright on my ibook the night before test. When I get to the office to get it with Microsoft Outlook 2005, guess what happened?

Outlook blocked the following potentially unsafe attachment df.exe

that's like saying

We think this file isn't safe, so we went ahead and deleted it. There's no way you can get it again. Ask him to send it again, and tell him to zip it before he does.

And indeed, I searched high and low for ways to recover the blocked attachments, and all Office Help offers was explaination of why they blocked it and what the sender should have done.

Don't get me wrong. Me as a user should be warned of the danger of openning an executable attachment, and it's a good first step towards that. The step becomes too big when there's no option for me to recover the file even if I'm possitively sure it's safe executable file I needed urgently for work.

Not cool at all.

Security is one thing, security at the expense of basic function is quite another. In this case, the whole attachment feature is pretty much gone, if I'm not sure when an incoming email with attachment will be blocked.

It's a fine balance, and just a little too much security can really piss your clients off.