Most attachments no longer open through mail client program.

I'm running Windows Live Mail (the 'client' program) under Windows 10 Pro. Even though it's not supported anymore, I like that mail program.

Up until just quite recently, and not associated with anything that I can identify doing, I lost the ability to open some mail attachments by clicking on the attachment in the message screen. Attached photos still open just fine through Windows Photo Viewer, and iCloud attachments open through my browser, but .pdf files will not open my default PDF viewer, Word .docs will not open Word and show, and zipped files no longer start WinZip. Hyperlinks in the message text do open my browser and display, however. Furthermore, I can no longer drag these items onto my Desktop, however I can do a 'Save as' from the same menu and put them there.

Here's a typical example. Clicking on the Excel attachment does nothing, however it can be 'saved as.'


Any ideas what could be broken? I've looked at all the options that Windows Live Mail provides, and see nothing having to do with this.

Sorry, I don't have Live Mail to try it out, but maybe the following two links may offer a solution:

1 Open Live Mail as administrator
I can not open Attachments from Windows Live Mail 2012 - Microsoft Community

2 If there is a Security setting as shown here to allow attachments to be opened (Of course you need to be aware that attachments could potentially contain malware).
email - Unable to open attachment in Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3502.0922) - Super User

Hope that helps.

das10, that did it! I found this post in the thread you steered me to:

So I went to the Start menu, right-clicked the WLM entry, navigated to its folder, right-clicked the .exe and set it up so that all users run the program in Admin mode. When I then restarted WLM all the attachments that had refused to do anything opened up just fine. I'd love to know how that ever got changed, but I'm not complaining.

I guess this means that the problem was associated with WLM, and not a 'global' Windows issue. Thanks to all who responded!