Solved Can't Open Video Email Attachment?All of a sudden I can no longer open

[TDKMate]

All of a sudden I can no longer open a video attached to an email. Outlook 2007 on Win 7 Pro 64. On my wife’s machine, also Outlook 2007 but Win Home, she has no problems.

I’ve Googled but haven’t found a fix..

Any ideas? It use to work. With this Covid mess going on, lot of folks are sending attached videos. I have to save the file and then view it, which is a hassle.

This may, or not, be a red herring but I recently edited Outlook’s NK2 file to fix an auto-complete problem, but it didn’t work so I reinstated the original NK2 file back and Outlook has acted goofy ever since.
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[Megahertz07]

Can be many things.

Why am I unable to open an e-mail attachment?

 

[TDKMate]

Can be many things.

Why am I unable to open an e-mail attachment?

Yeah, I know. I’m hoping for some setting somewhere I can change to allow video to be opened; I can still open photos just fine. In Googling I found some ‘fixes’ but their recommendations go to menu options I don’t have and can’t find.

I probably should not have included the ‘red herring’ info above as it’s muddying the waters. I just wanted to supply all the info I could…
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[Megahertz07]

When you double click on a video file does it open a media program?

 

[TDKMate]

Yes. VLC opens normally but gives no message, just a blank screen as if I opened VLC independently.

 

[Megahertz07]

What I meant is, if in Outlook, you save the file on a folder then with Explorer, go to the folder and double click, does it open VLC or MPlayer?

 

[TDKMate]

Interesting. Yes, but it doesn't play the video.


I don’t normally double click to open a video; I open VLC first and drag-n-drop the video into it from Windows Explorer. This helps keep junk out of the recently played list.

For testing, with VLC closed, I pick a random video in Explorer and double clicked. Same result as trying to view one from an email: VLC opened and gave only a blank screen.

With VLC still open, I double clicked a different video, and it played.

I closed VLC and then double clicked the same video I just played, and got nothing but the blank VLC window. With VLC still open I double clicked the same video and it played.

So apparently it’s a VLC opening issue/setting instead of an email problem.

I poked around a little in VLC’s Preferences’ and didn’t see an ‘auto play’ option but with all those options available, I may have missed it…
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[TDKMate]

On another test, I found an email where I hadn't deleted the video yet. On first double click, VLC opened with the blank screen as mentioned above. This time, though, I left VLC open and double clicked the video again, and it played.

 

[Megahertz07]

You're on the right track.
Try to reinstall VLC.

 

[TDKMate]

You're on the right track.
Try to reinstall VLC.

I’m on ‘the right track’ only because you put me there, Megahertz07! I’d still be messing around with Outlook settings if you hadn’t figure out it was a VLC problem. Thanks!!

VLC does, it turns out, have an Auto Play setting, which was Not checked. I checked it ‘on’ and now it works. I recently did play with some VLC settings and must have inadvertently turned it off.

For anyone having the same problem, below is a screen shot of where it is. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words:
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[Megahertz07]

Good to see you did find the solution.