[thelist] weird email problem

[Judah McAuley]

At 03:39 PM 1/25/01 -0800, you wrote:
>For some strange reason, I am unable to receive attachments from an office
>here in town. I don't get an email or an error or anything when they
>attach things to it.
>
>This has led to some unhappy moments, as you can imagine.
>
>I was able to receive attachments from them a few days ago. I am able and
>have received attachements from other people and one sent to myself as a
>test.
>
>Anyone have the faintest idea what could be going on?
>
>By the way, I'm running Outlook on Win 98.
>
>- amanda

Two suggestions:

1)  Most likely, the problem is a mail system (on their end or yours) that 
limits messages over a certain size.  Talk to the office and find out what 
the size of the attachment they are trying to send is.  Then try a few 
tests.  Have them send you a small attachment (say less than 10K).  If that 
gets through, then try sending your self a large attachment from somewhere 
else and see if it gets through.  If it does get through from somewhere 
else, then it means that the office probably has a filter set up.  If the 
large attachment from elsewhere doesn't get through, then the filtering 
problem might be on your end.  If the office can't even get a small 
attachment through to you (but can get regular email through), then perhaps 
it is problem idea #2.

2) It could be a badly implemented anti-virus program.  Some companies have 
anti-virus software on their gateways or mail servers.  These will look for 
attached VBS virii and such.  It could be that the system is set up to 
reject all mail messages with attachments.  This seems pretty severe and 
unlikely, but it is a possibility.

If you need any help trying various email sending/receiving configurations, 
you can contact me offlist and I'll be happy to help.

Judah