Saved Outlook email opens as an attachment

Question

When I try to open a saved Outlook email a new blank email appears with saved email as an attachment. If I click on the attachment it opens no problem. Why won't the saved email open directly?

Answer 1

Do you mean that you saved an Outlook message into a ".msg" file on your hard disk, and when you double click it from Explorer, it opens in Outlook by composing a new message with it as an attachment, rather than opening the message for display?

If so, you, or some program you installed, changed the file association action associated with Outlook .msg files. Or if that isn't it, it could be the security settings preventing it from opening.

Have a look here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-IN/outlook/thread/6bea2084-af7f-4a02-89da-c8a1066405c0

Answer 2

Do you maybe use "Outlook for Mac"? If so, this is a known problem in Outlook for Mac that it opens .msg-files as a new e-mail and adds the .msg-file as an attachment. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/how-to-open-msg-files-with-outlook-for-mac/e3f6ffb3-59ec-4e63-b591-536da2b68c31

The solution given in that thread is to send the msg-file to yourself and save it as an eml-file. Though I could not save it as an eml-file.

My solution is to ask an "Outlook for Windows" user to open the msg-file and save it as an eml-file.