Microsoft breaks New Outlook attachment opening with Edge Update

Attachments in New Outlook come undone thanks to Windows' fundamental interconnectedness of things

Users of New Outlook wondering where the option to open an attachment went have a culprit to blame – an Edge update.

The issue underscores how interconnected things are in the Microsoft ecosystem. According to the vendor, an update to Edge 156 "unintentionally enabled an unnecessary configuration," which means some New Outlook users are unable to open email file attachments.

An error stating the file cannot be opened also appears for some, along with an instruction to restart Outlook. However, the "Open" option goes away after the error is encountered. A workaround is to use "Save As" to save the attachment, and then open the file manually.

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Microsoft confirmed the issue yesterday afternoon in the advisory EX1528992, and early this morning began rolling out a fix to disable the "unnecessary" configuration. It expects that it'll take 12 hours for the fix to be rolled out, and users will have to close and reopen New Outlook to feel the benefit.

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The problem raises some interesting questions. While we'd understand how something unexpected in Edge might cause rendering issues in New Outlook, losing the ability to open attachments because of something an Edge update did is concerning and may make some administrators reconsider the blast radius of software updates.

We asked Microsoft for more information about the "unnecessary configuration" and will update this piece should it respond.

However, the incident highlights connections within Windows that might surprise users. In addition, it shows that, despite a woeful showing on the desktop market share front – although Edge recently "surged" to almost 15 percent last month, according to Statcounter, up from around 10 percent for much of the year – Microsoft's browser can still capture user attention. It's just not the sort of attention the Windows maker might have hoped for.

It is also worth noting that Outlook Classic does not appear to be affected by the issue (according to Microsoft's EX1528992 advisory for Exchange Online).

Impacted users could therefore temporarily add opening attachments to the list of things the old software does that the new software doesn't. ®