Unable to release items from quarantine when using Outlook 2007 with McAfee Groupshield

Following on from my last post i mentioned that getting an email out of quarantine wasn’t fun

Basically the procedure should go like this

• End user receives a message telling them an email to be delivered to them has been quarantined
• End user contacts administrator with ticket ID from quarantine notice
• Administrator locates email and releases message
• End user receives an email telling them their message has been released. In this message is a save button they have to press to save a copy of the email

It’s not quite that simple though for a couple of reasons

1) When the email arrives Outlook blocks the scripts from running in the email (quite rightly) which means there is an extra step to save the message to the hard disk as a HTML file

2) Once saved as a HTML file the save functionality isn’t very dynamic. You have to specify the save location manually as there is no browse button

3) The email is supposed to be saved in .eml format but the webpage adds an extra extension on for some reason which isn’t a great experience for the end user

4) EML files aren’t readable by Outlook so you have to open in them in Outlook Express / Windows Mail and then import them into Outlook

Lengthy and irritating

To make matters worse if you using Outlook 2007 when you do save the quarantine release notice as a HTML file the save button doesn’t work

It turns out this is because Outlook 2007 butchers the HTML and adds it’s own tags

To get around this

The save button then works

This is from McAfee KB51838 

My advice is that if you come across this when you locate the message on the server DONT release it from quarantine. Instead there is an option to download the EML file directly yourself.

This skips the whole save as HTML nonsense and you only have to worry about converting the EML message so Outlook can open

While on that subject – another McAfee article (KB53007) indicates that groupshield SP1 does away with this and will allow you save as MSG. If you read the last article you’ll know why you’d want to install SP1!

I haven’t had an email i can release from quarantine yet so can’t confirm this works

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Andy Parkes

Andy Parkes is Technical Director at Coventry based IT support company IBIT Solutions. Formerly, coordinator of AMITPRO and Microsoft Partner Area Lead for 2012-2013. He also isn't a fan of describing himself in the third person.

Latest posts by Andy Parkes (see all)

• Dishley parkrun, Loughborough - August 1, 2023
• Woodgate Valley Country Park parkrun - July 22, 2023
• Abbey Park parkrun - June 8, 2023