You did WHAT after opening an email attachment?!

It's crazy how often I hear something similar to the following:

"Hi, Tech Support? I opened an email attachment in Outlook and edited it and made changes, but now that I closed it I can't find that updated file and the one in the original email doesn't show my changes ..."

It should go without saying .. but seems to still need to be said:

"Don't open attached files directly from your email and edit them. Ever. Never-Ever."

If people pay attention to that advice we may have just solved about 70% of the future Tech Support calls related to this PEBCAK issue for end-users using Outlook 2003 and 2007.

If only ...

UPDATE: Thankfully Microsoft has taken action to resolve this being an issue going forward and has made it so that if the user is using Outlook 2010 for Windows or Outlook 2011 for Mac - Documents open in read-only mode, cannot readily be saved in the temporary folder structure and are saved in the "My Documents" folder by default.

For users with this issue in Outlook 2003 - 2007, try the following methods to find the temp file for the user:

Method 1:

1. If you have not already done so, set Windows Explorer to display hidden files and folders from its Tools > Folder Options > View menu >Advanced Settings > Files and Folders > Hidden files and folders > tick the Show hidden filers and folders radio button.
2. Then from the Windows > Start > Run dialog - type "%Temp%" and press Enter
3. This will open an Explorer Window into your user temporary file area of Windows:
4. In the left pane click "LOCALS~1" which will open another Explorer Window
5. Then open the "Temporary Internet Files" folder
6. Then open the "OLK**" folder (This is the Outlook temporary file area)
7. Select the file you were looking for and move it to the Documents folder

Method 2:

If the locations discussed above do not apply on your PC, then the safest procedure to adopt would be to:

1. Attach a test document (it doesn't matter what the actual content of the file is) to a message and e-mail it to yourself.
2. View the message.
3. Right click the attachment and use 'Open' to open the attachment in Word.
4. Opening the document will create temporary working files in the temporary folder Outlook uses for this purpose. The file will be opened from the temporary location which your PC uses to store attachments.
5. Save the document in the temporary folder.
6. With that document still open, select 'Open' from Word, which will now have set its focus to the temporary location.
7. Open the required document which should have your changes and save it to your usual document folder e.g. My Documents, as shown in the following sequence of illustrations.
8. You can then open the document from Word.
9. If the document does not appear in the folder in the above illustration, or if you have opened it again from the attachment and saved it with the same name (which should no longer be possible) any changes you originally made to it are lost.