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Make Outlook 2003 See ZIP Files
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 2:00 AM on January 25, 2008
Lifehacker alumnus Rick Broida posts a quick fix at the BNET blog for a quirk of Outlook 2003 that (still) hasn't really been addressed—compressed .ZIP files don't show up in the standard "Insert File" chooser used for email attachments. Rather than manually drag and drop every .ZIP file, Rick has this quick registry-tweaking fix:
As always, making a backup of your registry file before changing it is highly recommended.
- In Windows XP, click Start > Run, then type Command and hit Enter. In Vista, click Start, type Command and hit Enter.
- Type regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
- Wait for a confirmation box to appear. Click OK, then type Exit into the Command window to close it.
Tags: how to | microsoft outlook | outlook tip | zip
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
jarmod
Posted 4:34 AM 25/1/08
This also suppresses Windows inbuilt support for viewing ZIP files as folders in Explorer, right?
jarmod
bbirdrepro
Posted 4:34 AM 25/1/08
I've been using Outlook 2003 since it came out and have never had this problem (or never noticed it). In fact, I just browsed for a .zip file in my fully patched, newly installed, Outlook 2003. The only thing I can think of: Winzip is not installed on the users computer that is having this problem. I must admit I still install Winzip as I don't like the integrated compression utility in Server 2003 or XP.
This is my first comment. Great site Lifehacker!!
bbirdrepro
user313
Posted 9:35 AM 25/1/08
I wasn't aware that registering a DLL would require you to take a backup of the registry beforehand - would someone care to enlighten me what benefits there?
user313
johnny-d
Posted 10:35 AM 30/1/08
I've never seen factually incorrect tips on lifehacker before, so I felt I had to say something about this- both user313 and jamrod are right.
This tip is actually removing native OS support for ZIP files. Not the best of recommendations I'd say :-)
As for why it should make .zips show up in outlook I don't know, but the non-destructive alternative is to type '*.zip*' into the 'File name' field. (If this doesn't work, even with quotes, it's a proper bug and M$ should be your next stop)
Also it's not a registry hack as user313 points out, it's a dll de-registration (the /u switch). No registry backup is required.
I think the confusion may have arisen because of the similarity between regsvr32 (the dll registration engine) and regedt32 (the - now legacy - 32-bit version of the Registry Editor). Very similar names, completely different functions...
johnny-d