Why does Microsoft Outlook not like MATLAB's .MAT files?

Hello All,

This is not a MATLAB question but I would really appreciate any comments.

In my experience, outlook blocks .mat files sent as email attachments. One way we have managed to work around it by changing the file extension.

If you encountered this or a similar problem, or have elegant solution to the problem please comment. Also, we might want to report this issue to both Mathworks and MS Office collectively as a user group.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

[Vishal Rane]

What type of attachments are blocked depends on the internet policies of your company. I have personally not faced any problems sending any type of matlab file as attachments either thru outlook or other email applications.

Answer 2

[Andreas Goser]

MAT is also an extension used for Microsoft Access Tables. I am only aware of this solution document for working in MS Windows. I have not heard about issues with sending MAT files.

[Tom]

I had the same problem with sending .mat files from work to home- I had to download the attachments through GMail rather than Outlook as Outlook blocked them due to their being 'unsafe' - I never found how to set the security settings in Outlook to let me open them.

Answer 3

[Daniel Shub]

Microsoft considers the MAT extenstion to be a Microsoft Access Table Shortcut. This file type can contain scripts and code and therefore is considered a Level 1 unsafe file type.

More information can be found at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/blocked-attachments-in-outlook-HA001229952.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829982

If your Outlook is part of an Exchange Server, I think you might be screwed. If you are incontrol of your Outlook, you can enable the use of Level 1 files by editing the registry. You need to be careful when editing the registry since you can screw up your comptuer. The key you need to edit is called Level1Remove It will be located/needs to be created in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\XX.X\Outlook\Security

where XX.X is your "version" of outlook (14.0 is 2010). You want to add append .mat to the Level1Remove key value (use commas to seperate different values). You then need to reboot.

Answer 4

[Yusuf]

Outlook blocks .mat files from being downloaded for some reason - it's even worse if you're on an organisation or educational outlook account. If you have recieved files in the form .mat from somebody and you need to access them, simply forward the email to another email address like Gmail, Yahoo. You can access the files fine on there.