One of the more irritating features of Outlook is its desire to want to block attachments that it considers to be unsafe. I really don't want it to do that as I already have two mechanisms in place that perform this function. The first is my anti-virus software. The second is my common sense that says not to open any attachments from people that I've never heard of.
The usual workaround for this is to get back to the sender of the email and ask them to put the offending file in a zip. But that just makes it all the more ridiculous, as zip files are one of the primary means of spreading viruses. In fact the only time I did actually get a virus when I opened a dodgy-looking zip file out of curiousity thinking that it couldn't cause any harm!
In Outlook 2002 there doesn't seem to be a way of switching off this unwelcome feature. Maybe it's been improved in Outlook 2003, but I haven't checked. However help is at hand in the form of a Registry Edit. If you are familiar with this technique then go to key;-
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security
For other versions of Outlook then the '10.0' in the string will be some other value. In there you will see a value named Level1Remove (or if not you can create it). In the data you can add a string such as ".exe;.bas;.mdb" to tell it which file types to exempt from this process. Usual conditions apply - don't attempt this unless you are comfortable with editing the registry and happy to live with the consequences!
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