How to open outlook attachments without downloading them

[Gowrisankar]

Dear members of the forum,

I need to open the attachments from mails without downloading them. Is it possible using OutlookEx UDF ?

[jchd]

I fail to see how this can be possible, Outlook or not, UDF or not.

[water]

That would be like reading a book without opening it  

[jchd]

It's even worse: reading home a physical book sitting on its shelf at a remote library.
White magic, voodoo or worm in space-time only.

[Iczer]

hmm... if it seen in outlook, isn't attachments already on the drive? so it like : you have book on the table, but to read it you go to the Internet, purchase electronic copy, and only then read it?

[jchd]

Actually I don't know as I've never used Outlook and I don't know if it offers features like preview of body w/o inlined stuff nor attachments. (I wouldn't be surprised if MS had invented such non-standard things for enterprise edition or limited to use with MS mail service.)
If it doesn't then it's indeed like most (all?) heavy mail clients and if you have the mail then everything is already on your local drive.
 

[Juvigy]

Outlook downloads all attachments in an temp folder when you open them. What exactly do you want to accomplish?

[Earthshine]

in  cases where email is hosted online everything would be on their server in your account and there is preview with Outlook but i think the op is confused

[Gowrisankar]

3 hours ago, Juvigy said:

Outlook downloads all attachments in an temp folder when you open them. What exactly do you want to accomplish?

It is fine if the attachments are saved in temp folder when we open them from outlook. I presume it is deleted as soon as we close the attachment.

I want to open the attachments without saving them permanently in any location.

[jchd]

35 minutes ago, Gowrisankar said:

I presume it is deleted as soon as we close the attachment.

Certainly not. The file remains in temp folder until explicitely deleted.
Of course this doesn't apply to inlined contents, which can't be deleted unless the mail itself is deleted.
Also realize that "deleted" merely means "marked free fo reuse".

[benched42]

4 hours ago, Gowrisankar said:

It is fine if the attachments are saved in temp folder when we open them from outlook. I presume it is deleted as soon as we close the attachment.

I want to open the attachments without saving them permanently in any location.

But by default Outlook saves ALL opened attachments to what Microsoft calls the "Outlook Secure Temp Folder". This folder can be obtained by reading the registry at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\{Your Office version}\Outlook\Security". ({Your Office Version} for Office 365 is 16.0) This folder, an in fact any of the temp file folders, is not regularly cleaned out by Microsoft. (In the past I have referred to Microsoft products as teenagers because they don't clean up after themselves.)

Since the folder resides within the user profile and therefore needs no administrator privilege to access and/or remove files, a script can easily be written to delete all items from that folder, provided they are not open at that particular time.

[Gowrisankar]

Thanks everyone. So its clear that attachments are downloaded at-least in temp folder before being displayed.

[water]

Correct.
So to be safe I suggest you do everything yourself. Download the attachments to a directory of your choice, display the attachement and then delete the attachment or directory.

[Gowrisankar]

Thanks @water. I'm getting to know your UDF now. Presently I'm searching how to read items when there are more than one mail address configured in Outlook.

[water]

Are you talking about multiple stores or a single store with multiple addresses assigned?

[Gowrisankar]

I'm not sure of the terminology. As far as I saw there are two inboxes configured. Both are with different email address. I'm sorry I couldn't get it clear enough.

[water]

Run _OL_StoreGet.au3 to get a list of available stores.
To access the Inbox of another store use _OL_FolderAccess.

[Gowrisankar]

I'll try it and get back with results @water. Thanks again.

[Gowrisankar]

22 hours ago, water said:

Run _OL_StoreGet.au3 to get a list of available stores.
To access the Inbox of another store use _OL_FolderAccess.

Hi @water, I just passed the email address instead of * in "*\Inbox". It is working now. However I will do more testing. 

Meanwhile I am getting a popup message from Outlook when I try to read the body of the mail, asking to Allow/Deny. Is there any possibility to avoid this pop-up?

[water]

The recommended way is to make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date.
Another way is to use the first 4 parameters of _OL_Open to click away the message. Check the wiki for details.