(I wrote about it in September 2009.) People have been complaining about it constantly but Adobe has done nothing to fix it. Reports of this error message first turned up on the Adobe forums in June 2007, and bloggers began drawing attention to it in May 2008. To open this file in its own program, double-click it.”

“This file cannot be previewed because of an error with the following previewer: The bug: If you run a 64-bit version of Windows, you get an error message if you click the button to preview the PDF file in Outlook 2007 or Windows Explorer. (Leave the box checked for that warning – you don’t want to automatically preview every PDF file that arrives in your mailbox.) The dialog looks like this: When you click on the attachment, you’ll first see the dialog asking you to confirm that the attachment comes from a trustworthy source. This only applies to a few of you but you’ll be glad to see it if you’ve been one of the victims.īackground: if you use Outlook 2007 to open an e-mail message with a PDF attachment, you should be able to preview the attachment directly in the Reading pane. There’s finally a solution to a bug that Adobe has allowed to stand unpatched for far too long.