One of our clients was unable to open or save an Outlook attachment today. They received a permissions error, can’t create file: fax.tif. 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.
Outlook has a folder under Temporary Internet Files where it saves temp copies of file attachments when they are opened or saved to disk. Outlook does not delete the temp copy of the file if it is not closed properly. If an attachment with the same name is opened, Outlook will save the file in the temp folder with a (1). It will continue to increment until 99 copies of the same file name are in its temporary folder. When the 99 temporary copies limit is reached it will no longer open/save attachments of the same name. Deleting the temp files or the folder containing the temp files will fix the problem.
Outlook 2003 saves its temp files to a folder named OLK with a random sequence of characters. For Example, C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK387
Outlook 2007 saves its temp files to a randomly named folder under Content.Outlook. For example, C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\FD72HFYK
User profiles on Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers are stored in a different location, C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files
These folders are hidden folders and can only be reached by typing the directory path in Windows Explorer or using the CMD prompt. Allowing hidden files and folders to be visible does not reveal these folders, nor can you find the folder with a search from Windows Explorer even with the search for hidden files and folders option checked.
I have verified that you can delete the entire Content.Outlook folder from a computer running Outlook 2007, even while Outlook is running. The folder and temp folder will be recreated the next time an attachment is opened or saved. I created a simple batch file that deletes the Content.Outlook folder and since the entire organization has standardized on Outlook 2007 and Windows XP, I saved the batch file to a shared folder and used the %username% environment variable to allow any user to clear their own Outlook cache. My batch file was a simple one line command:
rmdir /q /s c:\docume~1\%username%\”local settings\temporary internet files\content.outlook”
I hope that helps anyone else having a similar issue!
