When I receive an email with an attached .PPS (PowerPoint) file I am able to click the file to open through PowerPoint Viewer. However, if I try to open the same types of files in a forwarded email, or save the file to disk and then attempt to open, the following message appears: ‘This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Create an association in the Folder Options control panel’. How can I open these files?

The two most likely causes of this problem are either the file extension is missing from the end of the PowerPoint file in the forwarded emails, or you are not actually trying to open the PowerPoint file but are instead opening an .EML file. We will deal with each of these scenarios.

First, it is possible that during the forwarding of the email with the PowerPoint file, the file extension from the end of the file has been lost. To test this theory, save the file from a forwarded email to your computer in an easy to access location (e.g. the Windows desktop). We now need to make sure the display of file extensions is enabled. Open Windows Explorer and then go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Folder Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘View’ tab. In the options, untick ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ and click OK. Close Windows Explorer and return to the Windows desktop. Look for the file you just saved from the email. Check whether the file has the .PPS extension. If not, add this extension to the file name. For example, if the file was just named:
mypresentation
Then change the file name to:
mypresentation.pps
Double-click the file to open in PowerPoint Viewer. If the presentation does not open correctly, or displays a message saying the file is not a valid PowerPoint file, it looks like the file you saved from the email is not the presentation file. In this case, we need to move to the second scenario.

When forwarding emails, Outlook Express may forward the email as an attachment. This means the forwarded email is sent as an attachment, particularly, an EML file which is attached to the main email message. This is opposed to forwarding the message ‘in-line’ where all the forwarded messages are contained in the body of one message. So, you could be attempting to open the forwarded attached message/EML file (which contains the PowerPoint presentation) rather than the presentation itself. Occasionally, Outlook Express can have difficulties opening these attached EML files if the file association for EML files has not been correctly setup. To fix this problem, close Outlook Express and go to the ‘Start’ menu > ‘Run’ and type ‘msimn /reg’ (without the quotes) and click OK. This will re-register all the Outlook Express file types. This command will execute silently, with no user feedback. Once it looks like it has finished doing its thing (e.g. no hard drive activity) start Outlook Express normally and check whether the problem has been resolved.