Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Force .eml Files to Open in Outlook 2007

Background

Files being collected in SharePoint email enabled lists are being received as .eml files by default since SharePoint uses SMTP services for receiving email.  The problem is that people want to use Outlook, not Outlook Exprerss to view their emails, and .eml files are not native to Outlook 2007 or earlier.

Workaround

1)      Modify the client registry:
a.     Make a backup of the following eml-file registration:
                                                               i.       HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.eml
b.      Install appropriate eml-Outlook2007-xxx.reg file by double clicking the file.
c.       Information taken from http://www.msoutlook.info/question/354
2)      Set the .eml file default to open in Outlook 2007
a.       Right click a .eml file
b.      Open With à Choose default program…
c.       Choose Outlook.exe
                                                               i.      C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Outlook.exe
3)      Modify the client registry again:
a.     Make a backup of the following registration:
                                                               i.       HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME
b.      Modify “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\message/rfc822”
extension=".eml"
CLSID=""