Change Attachment Risk Levels with a Registry Hack

Microsoft Outlook has three “risk levels” it can apply to attached files, which determines whether it warns you before downloading, tries its best to block you entirely, or just lets a file be grabbed without comment. If it doesn’t know what kind of file is attached, however, it prompts, which can be annoying for workers who regularly pass around certain file types. The gHacks tech blog explains how you can set Outlook to see files of any kind as low-risk, through a registry hack. Details of the hack after the jump, but be sure to back up your registry before marching forward.

To add file types to Outlook’s (and Windows’) low-risk watch, head to the following registry folder:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies
Right-click on “Policies” and create a new Key named “Associations.” Inside that key, you can create a new DWORD value of “LowRiskFileTypes,” then change its value by including file extensions, with periods, separated by semi-colons—”.odt;.flv” would add OpenDocument and Flash player files, for example, if you remove the quotes. Head to gHacks for more details on adding file types to other risk categories in Outlook.