Back in 2007, I wrote an article about an error that you get in Outlook when you have too many attachments of the same name:

Even Outlook 2010 has this problem.

In the article, I walk you through deleting these files by hand.

It is not an easy thing to do. You need to open the registry, find a key…then use that key to find a random folder name.

I thought it would be cool if we could build a utility that would do this for you. So, that is what we did:

It will automatically scan your registry, find all Microsoft Outlook attachments, and then display them to you in the main window.

If it all looks like stuff you want to remove, you just hit the “Clean Up” button and it will delete them for you.

Here comes the bonus. You can run it silently from the command line.

What would you need that for?

You might have user that opens lots of attachments, and runs into this bug all the time.

Here is how you can have it run without any prompts:

OutlookCleanup.exe /SILENT


It will quietly scan through your registry and find the temp folder and empty it. Throw this in a batch file and have it run at logon – you will never have to deal with this problem again.

Another thought came to mind while working on this: This is a security problem too.

While email is on your Exchange server…it is relatively secure. Not knowing this you might open a sensitive document, read it, and when you are finished – delete it. Unknown to you, Outlook has just made a copy of it and it is sitting right there on your hard drive. Waiting for someone to grab.

Until MS provides a fix, you can use this little utility to keep your Outlook attachments clean. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an update – this bug has been around since 2002.

Get your copy from our free downloads page

I was reading an article at PCMag about PatchMateXP. They have had all the patches for XP on one convenient CD.

Unfortunately for PatchMateXP, this breaks a license with Microsoft and they shut themselves down before they got into legal trouble.

This got me thinking – is there a way to get MS Updates on DVD or CD?

My findings were quite interesting.

After tons of digging, I found this Microsoft Knowledge base article: 913086

At that link, Microsoft provides ISO files that contain all of the security updates by month. They update it regularly.

This works fine if you are already patched up, and just need a few months. What if you need all of the patches for Vista, XP, or 2003? That won’t really help.

I dug some more, and I came across a free utility called Offline Update. You can download it from here.

It allows you to create an ISO file with patches for a specific version of Windows. It gets around those pesky legal issues by having you download the patches to generate the ISO file.

To use it, download the package from the above website, and extract it into a folder. In the root directory you will find a program named UpdateGenerator.exe

Launch it, and you will see that it has a simple, but effective interface:

It even includes patches for Office – a nice bonus.

Select the patches you want, and click start.

A command line window will popup and it will download for hours or days, but eventually it will finish.

When it completes, you will find the completed ISO file in the folder named ISO under the root:

In my case it was the 64 bit version of 2003/XP patches.

Want to know the coolest part?

The ISO it builds is more than a collection of patches, it includes a custom program that will automatically install all of them in one shot.

Simply pop your burned DVD into the drive, and a window will show up:

Don’t be confused by the list of options, it is just giving you a choice on non-patch items included in the ISO.

If you just want the patches, simply select nothing and click start. It will only install the patches that have not been installed on your system:

That is all there is to it. The program will install all of the patches, reboot, and the system is up to date.

Now, I can burn that ISO, and give it to my friend Brett, since he lives in an Internet dead zone.

This little utility can be a huge time saver. I highly recommend it.

With Microsoft Outlook there is always some form or wizard that needs to be completed before a user can start accessing their email.

Even in Outlook 2010, there are still setup pages the user has to fill out.

This can get especially painful if you have users that logon to different computers across your network.

We have an answer for this problem, and it is called Profile Generator.

Here is how it works…

Visit the download page:

(Link: http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/outlookprofilegeneratordownload/)

Set your exchange host name, and select your options.

Want Outlook to be configured with cache mode disabled?

- Check that box.

What about those laptops on the road?

- You can set it to configure HTTP based access.

Need to enable encryption?

- Check that box.

Then, once you have completed your selections, click the download button.

Our server will build a custom program that will apply all of the requested settings, and you can download it instantly.

Put the program in the users logon script, and now you have a lot more time on your hands.

Users are happy because their Outlook “Just works” everywhere on your network, and you are happy since you no longer have to deal with helping them set it up.

It works with Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 – and is compatible with Outlook XP, 2003, 2007, and 2010.

Only $299 for a company license. No per-user costs, just one price.

Check it out at:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/profile-generator/

I recently received a question from a reader:

Hi Steve,

It is very informative; however, it was almost what I was looking for. I would like to change the default OPEN location, so I was wondering if you know how that would be accomplished.

Very good question. It could be useful to have Outlook open to the folder of your choice when clicking on the attachment button – especially if you send lots of them every day.

The default option is that it opens to the documents folder:

The bummer is that after lots of research, I have come to the conclusion that the only way to change this is to change the location of your “My Documents” folder

You can change the folder location by right clicking it on your desktop, and going to properties. Or you can dig into the registry down to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

Find the “Personal” value, and change it to your folder of choice. From that point on Outlook will default to that folder when you go to attach a file. The side effect of this is that it changes the location of your “My Documents” folder – so this is a trade off you will need to consider.

That is the only way I know to change it. If anyone else has a better method, please email me (support@intelliadmin.com) or drop a line in the comments.

I have been seeing this message on and off with attachments for some time now in outlook:

Can’t Create file: VoiceMessage.wav. Right-Click the folder you want to create the file in, and then click properties on the shortcut menu to check your permissions for the folder

In this case it was a voicemail. Sometimes it is a PDF file, other times it is a BMP. The only connection I started to notice was the name of the file.

After some research I discovered that Outlook saves every single attachment you download – in a temp folder. If the same file name exists, it simply appends a number like this:

The only problem is that it gets stuck at 100. Once you have had 100 attachments with the same name you get the error message I described.

The trick is finding *where* outlook is storing all of this.

Update August, 2010 – We just created a utility that will clean up this folder for you. Look for the Outlook Cleanup Tool in our downloads section.

For more information about the download, visit this page

Microsoft decided that they would create a random folder name to keep viruses and maleware from finding this folder and exploiting it to their advantage.

The folder path can be found under this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security

See the variable on the right named “OutlookSecureTempFolder” – That is your path

Now that you know where the files are you can simply clear them out from time to time, and the error will go away.

Still, I am a little irritated that this problem has not been fixed by know in a service pack, or a patch. Hopefully Outlook 2007 does not have the same issue.