Cannot open Excel attachments in Outlook? This annoying bug is in charge

It’s been some time because the new model of Outlook overtook the outdated traditional model, however customers are nonetheless sad with it. The most recent problem? Sure Excel attachments aren’t opening in Outlook anymore, and the issue has been kicking round for about two weeks already.

Microsoft has confirmed the problem with a brand new service alert with ID EX1189359 (noticed by BleepingComputer), with the earliest reference to this specific drawback relationship again to November twenty third, 2025. Outlook customers will see the next message when making an attempt to open an affected Excel attachment: “Strive opening the file once more later.”

The trigger seems to be using non-ASCII characters in file names. Microsoft describes it like so: “Any person could also be unable to open Excel recordsdata hooked up to e-mail messages within the new Outlook shopper if the attachment accommodates non-ASCII characters.”

In a current replace to the service alert, Microsoft continues: “We’ve developed a repair to handle the lacking encoding within the requests used to open recordsdata. We’re validating this deployment whereas we work to grasp why this encoding error is going on.”

In different phrases, Microsoft is already engaged on a patch to handle it, however no launch date has been given for the repair.

Some main worldwide organizations, such because the Nationwide Well being Service (NHS) within the UK, have beforehand reported this problem: “Customers could also be unable to open Excel recordsdata hooked up to e-mail messages in new Outlook and obtain an error.”

Additional studying: Key ideas for the brand new Outlook app