Outlook 2003: email source downloaded via pop3

Hello,

I use Outlook 2003 with SP3 (11.8169.8172) on a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 (6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601) since yesterday. OS is up to date, nothing more to download in Windows Update at this moment. Outlook downloads via POP3 mails from a gmail account. I have the issue that, randomly, for an email with attachment(s) the source of the email is shown in Outlook after download instead of the correct formating of the mail + the attachments as files. The specific email is shown 100% correct in gmail web interface. Untill now I could not observe a pattern because this is happening for mails from different domains (yahoo, hotmail, others), with different attachments in size, filetype (mostly pps, jpg, txt), or attachment quantity. Its also happening from the same sender. On the 1st encounter I asked the sender to send the same email again, and it was downloaded correctly. (NOTE: both email versions were displayed correctly in gmail web).

Is this a known issue ? I want to ask this before starting to deeply look into this. The user of the PC is very attached to Outlook 2003 and upgrade to a newer version comes in question only if this issue cannot be resolved AT ALL!

Please advise what to check, what to change, I'm willing to do whatever needed to sort this out.

Both OS and Office is standard installation, configuration, no firewall, Win Defender is ON. Untill yesterday the same Outlook 2003 was used on WinXP for about 4 years and with the same gmail account this never happened. Cannot reinstall WinXP because of HW change, Win7 needs to stay. The PC in question is not the one from my system specs, its a Fujitsu Lifebook PH530.

Best regards,
Ivan.

One of the reasons you may not have any replies is that Outlook 2003 has been superseded by 2007, 2010 & 2013, so there are probably very few still using it.

Also as you are probably aware Microsoft are no longer supporting Outlook 2003, so it will become vulnerable to virus & other attacks. Which can then be passed on to other users that receive emails from this computer.

In the interests of security you should advise this person to upgrade their email program.

I still have Office 2003 and Outlook 2003, but I am moving to other applications.

Getting e-mail from a gmail account is not the way Outlook 2003 was designed to work. Web based e-mail services were not even around when Outlook 2003 came out. Best to access gmail via a web browser.

I tried some of the ways to access Hotmail (now called Outlook) and was not happy with that either. Just use Outlook 2003 (until I convert) with my ISP's POP3 e-mail account.

I am seriously considering Mozilla's Thunderbird for my e-mail as I'm not a fan of Windows Live Mail.

You will find many things different from Windows XP.