Microrosoft Word Attchments

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viviand
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Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2012 1:59 pm

Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

Hi!

I have been using Pop Peeper and MS Word for years often together. I am a freelance translator and always use PP to return my work. Recently, my clients are having problems opening my docs; read cant open at all and cant fix the issue on their end. Last week I purchased a new PC and installed a new version of Office 365.
Today, I sent an attachment and the same thing happened. I contacted MS and as expected, I was told it's not them it's you. I was quick to be cynical till they had me send the same attachment through my browser (mail.com website) rather than PP. The same document opened without issue. MS seems to think it might be a PP permission issue. Are there any settings I need to change to prevent this from happening again? NB this doesn't happen to incoming Word docs which are 90% of the attachments I receive.

Thanks in advance for your response. Stay safe!
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Jeff
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by Jeff »

Can you walk us through your procedure of how you attach the document? Bear in mind it might matter if the document is still open in Office, etc.

Are you able to reproduce the problem if you send the document to yourself?

Have you tried sending through another email provider? (e.g. gmail.com or outlook.com instead of mail.com)

What version of POP Peeper are you using? (main menu: Help / about)
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

Thanks for the prompt response!

1) I click on the paper clip when composing an email and select the file I need to attach. From my experience it wont let you add a doc if it is open or you get some warning. Regardless, I close the doc before emailing so as to be sure I send the most recent version of my doc

2) yes, as stated above. When I used the mail.com website and sent the document my client could not open to myself; it opened fine. When I sent it to myself using PP I had the same problem opening the file my client did ie error message from Word saying there was unreadable content.

3) I don't have a gmail address and I have never used Outlook. If it helps, also note that I have sent today's document through PP to 3 others other than myself and all experience the same issue. This is not a new issue and has been ongoing for some time. I don't remember when it started sorry,

3) I made a fresh install today from your website since this is a new pc 4.5.3

Thanks!
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mjs
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by mjs »

Hi viviand, to clarify -- are you saying when you use POP Peeper to send messages with attached MS Word documents the attachment(s) cannot be opened successfully on the receiving end?

FWIW - Using POP Peeper, I've just sent a test message using mail.com for both the sending and receiving Email Service provider accounts that included an attached ".docx" (MS Word) file and when reading the message in POP Peeper I was able to open the MS Word file w/out any issues. (I also sent a 2nd test doing the same thing using PP but sending from mail.com to another Email Service Provider and still no problems opening the attached document. I was able to open the MS Word document in PP as well as each of the Email Service Providers websites on the Internet by either opening within the website or by downloading the file and opening it.) So the problems described here (that I am unable to duplicate) would not appear to be with POP Peeper or the Email (mail.com) Service provider as far as I can tell.

Just to clarify viviand in regards my tests described above, are you saying that if you were to do exactly what I just did -- you would not be able to successfully open the attached MS Word file?

And to further clarify are you also saying that the attachment issue only occurs when sending messages via POP Peeper (as opposed to sending the same message via the mail.com website using your browser) and that when sending the message via POP Peeper the receiving parties (that would not be using POP Peeper) are unable to open the attached MS Word documents successfully (using their browser on the Internet to read the message)?
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. - Will Rogers
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

I didn't think I was so unclear lol

1) yes, Word attachments cannot be opened by recipients when I use PP to send them

2) your successful attempt does not nullify my unsuccessful and repeated attempts with different documents to multiple various users. I had Microsoft tech support connect to my PC and they replicated my issue exactly (sending from mail.com website and using PP) from my machine which is how they concluded it was PP after going through my Word and Windows 10 settings.

3) I have sent the document to myself both through mail.com website and had no issues opening it and using PP where I was unable to open the same attachment I had just successfully opened from the website.

4) In addition, this is a brand new PC (less than a week old) with new installations of Office (downloaded this week from MS website) and PP (also recently downloaded from the website). This problem was also present in my previous PC and had been occuring for some weeks. Again, using different doc's and to various recipients. I don't know when it started and what may have caused the behaviour.

5) I would be happy to send a dicument both ways to an email address of your choice.
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spc3rd
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by spc3rd »

Hello viviand,

One additional question for you - are you still using a VPN as you have previously?

Thank you & best regards.
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viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

yes, I use PIA.
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mjs
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by mjs »

Your use of a VPN (specifically PIA) may be a significant factor.

Have you tried the same sending of attached document tests via PP with PIA temporary disabled (to see if this makes a difference)?

Addendum - Here is a link you may find interesting: Office 365 cloud features do not work when using a privacy VPN.
Last edited by mjs on Thu Aug 13, 2020 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. - Will Rogers
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Jeff
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by Jeff »

viviand wrote: Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:02 am your successful attempt does not nullify my unsuccessful and repeated attempts with different documents to multiple various users.
He's not suggesting that it does, but the first step in troubleshooting is to be able to reproduce the behavior. Since we're not able to reproduce the behavior that you're seeing, there's something different in the methodology that you're using compared to what we're doing, so we need to figure out what the relevant factors are. That's why my first question I asked was to walk us through the procedure you use. If you can provide any more details in that regard, it may help. ie. where are you saving your documents (on a local drive, encrypted storage, on a cloud-sharing folder or anything else special about the folder?) and does the problem occur for an older word document that you haven't opened in Office recently, etc.

5) I would be happy to send a dicument both ways to an email address of your choice.
Yes, that should help, please send to (support at esumsoft dot com) and if you can also send the same file without corruption (ie. send a 2nd email directly from mail.com), that will help so I can do a comparison.
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

1) I save all my documents to the usual "my documents" folder on my hard drive, I don't use any cloud. My VPN is always on. My document is always closed when I send it.

2) I have sent 3 emails:
a) from the mail.com website
b) using PP with my VPN on
c) using PP with my VPN off

3) I turned the VPN off rebooted for extra insurance and sent it to myself and the issue still occurs as you hopefully see in my email

4) I will try to contact PIA at some point when I am not working this weekend and run it by them as well...

Please let me know if I can provide additional info. Thank in advance; your help is greatly appreciated!
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

@lakrsrool Thanks for the article but I never use "the cloud". Almost everything I produce is of a confidential nature so I keep everything on my hard drive and backup to an external hard drive here with me.

I will contact PIA at some point.

Thanks!
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Jeff
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by Jeff »

RESULTS:

There are 2 parts to this:

1) The problem occurs when the filename contains 8-bit characters (e.g. é or à). Sending the same file but replacing accented characters with 7-bit characters (e.g. e or a) avoids the problem.

2) There is apparently a bug in mail.com's SMTP implementation, so this bug will only occur when sending email through mail.com (and probably other 1&1 servers like gmx). When the filename contains an 8-bit character, then for some reason, mail.com removes the line containing "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64" which tells the receiving client how to properly decode the data and --without this information -- this explains why the corruption occurs. I tested the same filename with other SMTP servers and there is no problem.


This will be addressed in POP Peeper v5.0, in that POP Peeper will encode the filename -- which it should have been doing anyway, so there's blame to be shared between POP Peeper and mail.com here.
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

Thank you for your perseverance in finding the issue. I am glad I sent a file with an accented letter if not you would have thought I was crazy and there was no problem... I did my own test sending my client the same file with an without an accented letter and as you say only the file without accent opened successfully.

I never cease to be amazed by the support you give. Have a good weekend and stay safe!
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mjs
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by mjs »

So then my mail.com tests passed scrutiny because the attached file I used did not have any accented characters (which I will say I virtually never use :))

And yes, it certainly was a good thing your example did include these type characters viviand. Image (you must use these characters relatively often :-s).
Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. - Will Rogers
viviand
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Re: Microrosoft Word Attchments

Post by viviand »

yup, @lakrsrool thankfully as luck would have it that is what I sent. If not, there would be a lot of head scratching going on...
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