Exchange Attachments

[AJ]

I've got an issue with exchange at the moment and it's causing a few problems.

We are running Exchange 2003 with a front end server (same edition). All of the pupils use OWA to access/send their emails as do most of the staff. We did an upgrade earlier this year to Office 2007 and now when they send work to their teachers, the teachers receive a .zip file rather than a .docx file and they can't open the attachment.

I found what could have been a solution on the Microsoft web site that the extensions were not registered mime attributes in IIS. Entered them into IIS on both the exchange server and the front end server. I have also done this in exchange as well.

This only seems to be an issue for those using OWA as I can receive these attachments using regular Outlook no problem.

Thanks

[wagnerk]

Strange, we're also running Exchange 2003 in the Frontend/back-end config and have had no additional problems with Office 2k7 files.

-Ken

[Notes_Bloke]

What browser version are you using - IE6/7?

Have you tried OWA in firefox to see if it still misbehaves?

NB

[Tinus1959]

Just to get this straite: the students send a docx file and OWA transfers this into a zip file?

[AJ]

Originally Posted by Notes_Bloke

What browser version are you using - IE6/7?

Have you tried OWA in firefox to see if it still misbehaves?

NB

Mixture of IE 6and 7. TBH no not tries in FF. As FF can not be controlled by group policy we aren't using it.

Originally Posted by Tinus1959

Just to get this straite: the students send a docx file and OWA transfers this into a zip file?

That's about the sum of it. It's either an OWA problem or Exchange

[Notes_Bloke]

Are these the entries that you added to IIS?

NB

[AJ]

Yup thems the ones

[Notes_Bloke]

Did you restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service after adding them in?

NB

[AJ]

Hmm not sure that we did. Just restarted the www service and lets see what happens.

Thanks for your help and I'll let you know how we get on.

[AJ]

Right update on this.

restarted the WWW service on both the exchange server and the front end server and it's still happening

Any more ideas please peeps

[Stoney]

This may help: Description of the KnownContentTypes registry entry for Outlook Web Access

and this: How to manage Outlook Web Access features in Exchange Server 2003

sorry if you've trawled through this lot already!

EDIT: And this one too: Outlook Web Access - Configure Attachment Blocking

You could also try recycling the application pools after you've added in those MIME types.

[zebulebu]

AJ - are you rotuing mail internally through an AV/Anti-Spam appliance? Could be something to do with MIME settings for the O2K7 file formats on them if you are. The .docx, .xlsx, .pptx etc extensions are actually archive files, which may indicate why they're being seen as zips.

I'd also check that your desktop firewalls are not being spiteful about zip files - especially if you're using something clever (a layer 7 inspection firewall like the ISA client would be a prime example)

It might also be worth checking through MAPI conversion in Exchange itself - Exchange converts MAPI messages to the OWA-represnentable format and needs to have files registered so that it understands the process.

Open ESM and go to the following location and see if the attachments are correctly registered there. If not, then you'll need to find out how to register them - I had to do this a couple of years ago for something, but can't for the life of me remember the article I used!

[AJ]

Zeb

Nope all internal mail is routed locally and not through our antispam/AV people.

Sparky, that's for the links mate. They all seem to be for stopping attachment types and the new Office formats do not appear in those lists, so I can't see how they are being changed.

[Stoney]

Originally Posted by AJ

Zeb

Nope all internal mail is routed locally and not through our antispam/AV people.

Sparky, that's for the links mate. They all seem to be for stopping attachment types and the new Office formats do not appear in those lists, so I can't see how they are being changed.

Sparky heh?

From what I read about those docx files is they are actually compressed/archived Word documents. Outlook knows how to open them because it is part of office, but Internet Explorer only sees them as archived files because it doesnt' know what they are, to IE they're just archives or zip files.

Most places say to set the MIME types in IIS, like you have done and then this seems to do the trick. Obviously not in your case!

[AJ]

Stoney sorry mate doh at me

anyway, this is the entry in the IIS and exchange where Zebs image is shown

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

with the extension type docx

That's just the word entry, all the others for the other office applications are the same.

Thanks for your time guys