Good grief! What is up with this? My friend emailed me a database file, and Outlook tells me it won't let me receive it. Have any suggestions?

This may be moderately annoying, but it is in your best interest to have Outlook do everything it can to protect you from malicious code which may be hiding in database files and executable files. So you may not be able to open that MDB or EXE file your friend sent you.

But don't despair, you can get around Outlook if really need that file. Email your friend back and tell him "I need you to change the file extention to .MDX (or anything else besides .MDB) and then resend it to me."

Your friend changes the file extension, Outlook no longer recognizes it as a database file, and it lets it through. Now, when you save the attachment, you've just got to remember to change the extension back to .MDB and you're good to go!

2016 Update: This is not just an Outlook issue anymore. E-mails tend to get checked for potential viruses at every step along the delivery process. And some services are downright scary in how sophosticated their checking algorithms are. I have a client that I do VB.net development for, and occasionally they need me to update a single *.aspx file and e-mail it down to them. But their mail server rejects as hazardous any e-mail with the *.aspx extension.

No problem, right? Just change the extension to something like *.asz.

No dice; their server still rejects it.

Okay, so let's try zipping the *.aspx file. Nope. Still no joy.

Change the file extension, then zip it?

Their server is smart enough to still recognize as potentially hazardous.

Change the file extension, zip it, change the zip file's extension from *.zip to *.ziq. STILL no luck.

Give up and mail the updates to my contact person's personal e-mail address.