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25 Jul 2015, 01:09 PM | #1 |
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Reading an Attachment
This is more of a "geeky computer" question than an email question but here goes...
I needed to read an email that someone sent a few months back, and discovered she sent it as an attachment. All I was getting was "Session expired, please close and re-open the page." I tried downloading it. I then tried saving it to Files with the same problem. Finally I just right-clicked and saved it to my desktop. It's a Word document (probably 2013) and I don't have Word, but I have docx attached to Open Office Writer. So once downloaded it did open Writer, after giving me some dialog box about ASCII filters. When it opened it said the same thing "Session expired, please close and re-open the page." What? It looked like the document was open. (In my original reply to the email I made reference to having to put it on a flash drive and open it on another computer, so I tried that too. I have an older version of Writer on the other computer. Same thing. I'm not sure how I managed to read this the first time, but I'm pretty sure it was at home with the same computers.) Any ideas? (And no, I can't just get another copy from her.) |
25 Jul 2015, 01:29 PM | #2 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
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It feels like the document contains an embedded link, probably to a web page, possibly malware.
Have you carefully checked the file with a good up to date antivirus? I would try opening the file with Notepad and looking for http:// type links. Even better, can you find a serious techie to look at the file for you? If you want, send me a private message, and I will give you an email address you can forward it to me as. |
25 Jul 2015, 02:39 PM | #3 |
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Thanks for your response, but this isn't a problem attachment. This is from a former friend of mine, and yes I know it's from her, and I've read the attachment before and know what it is. It's basically just an email from her, and for some unknown reason she chose to write it in Word and then attach it. (I even told her not to do that again. )
Of course... there's nothing saying something on my computer doesn't think it's a bad file. I can certainly run the scanner on it. But I managed to read it the first time. |
25 Jul 2015, 03:06 PM | #4 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 2,281
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Sounds like the Word file is corrupted or more likely an issue with attempting to open a .docx file without having Word on your computer, It's not password protected is it?
Suggestion: try using another application to open it. I take it that you do not want to buy Word, so another option would be to use the Word online version associated with a Microsoft account, or use the Chrome extension Office Editing for Docs, Sheets & Slides that opens and saves Word files, that is if you have a Google account. You could ask a friend with real Word on his/er machine to attempt open it. I've had better luck launching the application first, then using the open file command -- rather than double clicking in the file. You might also try online file conversions such as ZamZar to convert to text. |
25 Jul 2015, 03:26 PM | #5 |
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Thanks, William. While everything you say makes sense, I've had this file open before, probably using Open Office. (Which is what I always use cause my Word is a gazillion years old and I don't use it.) Don't have an MS account and don't use (or want to use) Chrome. We have Word at work but I can't get to that til next week.
I tried double-clicking, I tried right-clicking and using "open with," I tried opening Writer first, and I've tried Notepad and Wordpad, both giving me the same message, which is odd since they'd usually give me gibberish. I'll see what that ZamZar thing is about. |
26 Jul 2015, 12:10 AM | #6 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 2,281
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File corruption can happen even though you have successfully opened the file previously. Malware or something that BritTim described is also possible.
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26 Jul 2015, 01:25 AM | #7 |
Intergalactic Postmaster
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Irving, Texas
Posts: 8,926
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We still need to determine if that email attachment contains the characters "Session expired...". Please try viewing the raw message (headers and message body in ASCII characters) and look for that character string.
If you instead see some URL link in the raw message, try refreshing your browser screen (reloading the page) when you see the "Session expired" message. It's possible that the sender sent you a link to her browser page URL shown when she was viewing a Word document using her webmail account. I think that you may be trying to view a session page of her webmail provider, and that session has now expired. Bill |
26 Jul 2015, 10:38 AM | #8 |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 2,281
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That would certainly explain the difficulty.
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26 Jul 2015, 06:23 PM | #9 | ||
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Quote:
Received: from [xxx.xxx.xx.xx] by web161002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:18:45 PDT X-Rocket-MIMEInfo: 002.001,UGxlYXNlIHJlYWQgdGhlIGF0dGFjaGVkIG1lc3NhZ2UKATABAQEB X-Mailer: YahooMailWebService/0.8.203.696 Message-ID: <1412291924.39893.YahooMailNeo@web161002.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 16:18:44 -0700 From: name and email of friend Reply-To: ditto Subject: Please Read... To: me MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="442175996-1280321610-1412291925=:39893" --442175996-1280321610-1412291925=:39893 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="442175996-1165413010-1412291925=:39893" --442175996-1165413010-1412291925=:39893 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Please read the attached message --442175996-1165413010-1412291925=:39893 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii <html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:14px"><div>Please read the attached message<br></div></div></body></html> --442175996-1165413010-1412291925=:39893-- --442175996-1280321610-1412291925=:39893 Content-Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document; name="File Name.docx" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="File Name.docx" UEsDBBQABgAIAAAAIQAykW9XZgEAAKUFAAATAAgCW0NvbnRlbnRfVHlwZXNd LnhtbCCiBAIooAACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA .... continued jibberish like this. Quote:
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26 Jul 2015, 06:55 PM | #10 | |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,090
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Quote:
Code:
PK!2‘oWf¥[Content_Types].xml ¢(* Last edited by BritTim : 26 Jul 2015 at 07:02 PM. Reason: Include initial part of base64 decode |
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26 Jul 2015, 08:08 PM | #11 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: U.S.
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I don't see anything that looks like that. I did a search on "PK" and all I find is just those letters randomly in the middle of jibberish - none of which looks anything like what you typed. (Stuff like "pKWn+nor4x9cupfb6K4Vf7gLD9VNg5kGcAP8bM6mzqOQ2RuM=")
I did get your PM - just trying to do 10 things at once and really should be sleeping. May need to continue this later... I do appreciate everyone's time. |
26 Jul 2015, 08:54 PM | #12 | |
The "e" in e-mail
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,090
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Quote:
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27 Jul 2015, 12:15 AM | #13 |
Intergalactic Postmaster
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Irving, Texas
Posts: 8,926
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Possible corrupted Fastmail cookies
After performing a web search for the error message you are seeing, I think you have corrupted Fastmail cookies. See this EMD thread:
Cannot open attachments So let's try again:
Bill |
27 Jul 2015, 08:29 AM | #14 |
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Oh, Bill, that did it!! I had to try it twice. The first time I think I clicked on download and still had the same problem. So I deleted the cookie again (and used regular mode cause I always use classic), and this time right-clicked and saved the file. And that time it worked!! Immediately followed by saving the file as an rtf so I have it now. (That was dumb of me not to do a search on that message.)
There's a project I need to do and the exact verbatim message from her was important. I'm really glad to have that back finally! Sorry, BritTim, I don't understand what the base64 stuff meant, so didn't get what you were referring to. (Is that like hex and binary and that sort of thing, i.e. like base8 or whatever? I've never heard of base64 but I guess it should be able to exist, but there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to cover that. LOL.) I do appreciate your offer to look at the file!! Appreciate everyone's time. Thank you! |
27 Jul 2015, 08:35 AM | #15 |
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P.S. Forgot about this part, but just in case someone else runs into this problem, I thought I should post it.
I thought I saw someone mention "different settings" for cookies.... Well, I always have cookies turned off and put things in my exception list. (Firefox) When I tried it the second time, after deleting the cookie again, I just turned cookies on so it wouldn't have used the exception list. I don't know if this had any effect or not. (I best turn them back off before I have a mess of cookies... ) |