outlook 2000 emails inserted in tasks don't open

[davidgreenson]

I am using Windows XP Professional and Office 2000 SR-1 with service pack 3.

Emails that I have attached to tasks do not open; notes do. This is true both of old tasks and old emails, and also with new ones.

My other machine uses XP Home and the same Office 2000, and this problem doesn't occur, even when using the identical outlook.pst

I have uninstalled and reinstalled. I have used windows cleanup utility to clear the registry and related files, and then reloaded the original outlook.pst on a freshly installed version, but no change.

Has anyone run across this problem before?

[soybean]

Emails that I have attached to tasks do not open; notes do. This is true both of old tasks and old emails, and also with new ones.

Exactly what steps do you follow to attach an email to a task?  With Office 2003, I see that I can drag an email into Tasks.  This appears to add that email as a separate/new task.  Is that your procedure? 

[davidgreenson]

Sometimes I use that dragging procedure. More typically, from within a previously defined task, I click on Insert > Item and the select the Email that I want to attach. It now appears, along with an envelope icon, in the notes section of the task.

[soybean]

OK, I see how that works.  "Insert > Item and the select the Email" works for me; I can open the email from within the Task.  I don't have a solution now; I'll do a bit of searching and see whether I can find something.

By the way, what happens when you try to open an email from a Task?  Do you get an error message?

[davidgreenson]

Nothing happens. No error message. No indication that any command has been performed.

I suspect that there is some problem with xp pro and outlook, since I don't have this problem on the machine with xp home.

[davidgreenson]

I have solved the problem, thought others might profit by knowing how. Turns out it was a conflict between Outlook and Google Desktop. By removing the latter, the problem disappeared. According to this article, it is only an old version of google desktop that this applies to. See http://thebackroomtech.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/problems-opening-outlook-attachments-with-google-desktop-search-installed/
Since I didn't really use google desktop much, I just removed it, and so haven't tested out the possibility that the newer version works with Outlook.

[soybean]

Thanks for sharing that info, and glad to hear problem resolved.