Update…Microsoft’s June Security Update Causes Attachment Handling Issues in Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016

by Julia Skochko
Desktop & Applications Architect

Affected Products:  Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.

Problem:  Microsoft’s June 2017 update for Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016 may result in abnormal attachment handling. This presents as two issues:

Issue 1:  Attachments which contain two dots or an exclamation point in front of their file extension (e.g. Test.txt or Test!.txt) may be blocked as “potentially unsafe attachments” despite having safe file extensions (e.g. PDF, DOCX). When an attachment is blocked, the following message is displayed in the Outlook Infobar: “Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments.”

Outlook info box

Issue 2: Embedded attachments (ones that appear as icons within the body of an Outlook item) cannot be opened. This affects attachments within RTF-formatted messages, calendar items, contacts, and tasks. Attempting to open these items produces the following error: “The program used to create this object is Outlook. That program is either not installed on your computer or it is not responding. To edit this object, install Outlook or ensure that any dialog boxes in Outlook are closed.”

Microsoft Outlook Alert Box
Fix: Microsoft has released updated patches which resolve the issues introduced by the June security updates. Download links to the patches are available below:

Affected ProductPrevious (Non-Working) UpdateCurrent (Working) Update
Outlook 2007KB3191898KB3213643
Outlook 2010KB3203467KB2956078
Outlook 2013KB3191938KB4011078
Outlook 2016KB3191932KB4011052