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Outlook Attachment: The operation failed…
Thursday, 18 September 2008
11 CommentsAttachments in Outlook 2007 were failing to open or save and were instead reporting an alert saying “The operation failed. An object could not be found.” as shown in the image below.
Interestingly, the attachment appears to work just fine using OWA (web version of Outlook) which leads me to think the problem must be somewhere in the Outlook 2007 client implementation.
Going into Tools -> Trust Center -> Add-Ins and disabling the Add-Ins didn’t work and running Office Diagnostics yielded no results, nor did clearing out the Outlook temporary files folder.
The fix was unusual in that I noticed Symantec Endpoint Protection was disabled, enabling it immediately resolved the problem and attachments now open and can be saved.
One thing that I would like to have tried would have been to go into Tools -> Trust Center -> Add Ins -> Manage -> Exchange Client Extensions -> Go and Disable the Symantec AntiVirus Outlook Protection extension to see if that worked. UPDATE: A few people have reported success with this setting so it may worth giving it a go.
If you are still having trouble Microsoft Knowledge Base Article Q312354 “You receive the “The operation failed. An object could not be found” error message when you click Send and Receive in Outlook” suggests you may need to create a new profile. In summary you need to close down Outlook then head into the Mail icon in Control Panel. Click Show Profiles on the dialog box and on the General tab Add a new profile.
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I tried your second suggestion regarding fixing the problem of not being able to download attachments: operation failed. an object could not be found. Well it worked just fine. thanks for that.
Your suggestion: One thing that I would like to have tried would have been to go into Tools -> Trust Center -> Add Ins -> Manager -> Exchange Client Extensions -> Go and Disable the Symantec AntiVirus Outlook Protection extension to see if that worked.
Thanks for letting me know it worked Pete – I am glad you got your problem sorted. Jas.
I have problem with Symantec end point 11.0 I did remove it manually per Symantec instrctions. Seems mess up with the registry.Could not reinstall it.
Finally I installed AVG free version. Next day I got the same problem out look will not open any attachment, and in OWA its open. Thanks for this article, I wnet to Add in Manger-> Exchnage Client extension and uncheck the symantec Anti virus Out look extension. Now all attachments are open.
I found that the only reason most software fails is due to Norton related security software…
Try AVG – it’s free and does not interfere like Norton…
Thanx for the solution Jason
Just wanted to say thanks Jason, it worked! Only tricky thing was you said “Manager” not manage (down the bottom). Took me a minute to figure it out but I got it. again, many thanks!
Thanks for the heads up Dan, I have corrected the typo
Thank you!!!! It took me an hour to find this page but it solved my problem.
Worked like a charm!!! Thanx!!
What a find! I had uninstalled SEP11 client from a machine yesterday and today the user could not open attachments. Apperantly it did not uninstall cleanly. Your second suggestion in the Tools menu tree did it for me. Thanks!
Thank You!!!!!! Second suggestion worked great!
20 years of Technical training and research and a strong gut told me Symantec had something to do with it, and sure enough, there it is! Thanks for putting a happy ending to my trialing search!