Cannot open attachments in Outlook after update to 11.6.6.

All... I believe I found the solution. I recently upgraded to Big Sur and could not open attachments on Outlook for Mac. I turned off "Connect Fonts" which is the latest version of Extensis's Suitcase Fusion Font Manager.

Once I turned that off, POOF... my jpg attachments would open with a simple double click. Once I turned CF back on... the attachments wouldn't open.

So, if you use a 3rd party font management program... try turning that off and see if it saves the problem.

Be sure to restart your mail program after you turn off any font management apps.

Good luck!

The release of macOS 11.6.7 this week had a line item about opening attachments in Outlook. I would apply this update, ensure that you have the current Outlook installed, and see if the problem has gone away.

I posted earlier about having the same problem so I rolled up my sleeves and fixed it. I had to download an installer file for Big Sur 11.6.5 and then make a bootable USB stick from it. Then I had to delete my Mac's HD drive using 'disk utility' and use the USB stick to do a fresh install of 11.6.5. There are plenty of YouTube clips of how to do it and this is what I followed.

I am pleased to say that after installing 11.6.5 and the Office 365 suite, everything is back to normal so it definitely IS the Big Sur 11.6.6 update that was causing the issue.

It's taken all morning to sort this and luckily I have nothing stored on my local drive (otherwise I would have needed to back this up first) but the end result is what I wanted.

Thank you Apple for causing a big pain in the arse to a lot of people!

I am having the exact same issue but with Mac Mail. So it's likely not an Outlook issue. The issue appeared after updating to Big Sur 11.6.6. Someone else in the thread said that it only did this when Preview is already open, and I've confirmed the same. If I double click an attachment with Preview closed, it will launch preview and open the attachment. But if Preview is already open, I will get the permissions error. I will file my own report with Apple.

Hi Again

Just finished installing 11.6.7. I have tested opening various attachments in both Outlook and Mail and it would seem that the problem has been fixed. This is on my trusty old MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015).

I hope everyone else finds that the update has fixed the problem too.

If you go to System Preferences > Privacy > Full Disk Access > Add Outlook

Now when opening attachments, the error is no longer present. I hope this helps.

not surprisingly, upgrading to 11.6.7 resolved the issue on my mid-2014 MacBook Pro and late-2014 iMac as well - huge relief - curious though, in light of what must be scads of these older, yet still viable, systems in use, that, unless i missed something, none of the Apple Care techs mentioned by this forum's contributors seemed familiar with the issue or its imminent fix, considering Apple's software engineers had to become aware of the issue, then design & test the fix before distributing 11.6.7 - to have heard AC techs report Apple was aware of the issue and working to fix it would have been reassuring, not to mention saved many of us several hours of re-installs and risky workarounds - was it a nefarious equipment upgrade marketing scheme? - did someone working on 11.6.6 make an Apple-embarrassing mistake? - what actually happened may remain forever shrouded behind Apple's cloak of proprietary secrecy - many thanks to all the contributors for making all the noise you did, whether or not Apple already knew what was up - this guy is just very happy to be back in business and thankful for the forum - stay well folks - blessings

Hi All

Big Sur 11.6.7 has just appeared in software update. It claims to fix these attachment issues. I will start installing in a moment. Fingers crossed!

Looks like this issue is addressed with the 11.6.7 update.

Just ran across the problem myself.

What's new in the updates for macOS Big Sur - Apple Support

Hope this helps.

:)

So finally, I upgraded to Monterey and all problems gone. I think mac user who are able to do this upgrade this is the only and (swift) fix than waiting Apple and Microsoft’s solutions. I have Early 2015 MacBook Air. So far I don’t see any performance related problems. So may be this can be encouraging for whom are hesitating older Macs may have suffer due to latest MacOs. Good luck to all !

I have this problem too. I tried giving Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint full disk access from Privacy Settings. It no longer ask permissions.

As for PDF, when I switch the default app to Adobe Acrobat, no issue. Only with Preview as the default. But today I revert to Preview as default app to open PDF, it didn't ask for permission, strange.

martin8189 wrote:

Hi All

Big Sur 11.6.7 has just appeared in software update. It claims to fix these attachment issues. I will start installing in a moment. Fingers crossed!

Hi Martin.

Please update the forum and let us all know how you got on.

Good luck!

Same problem here. But I did some testing:

The problem only occurs when preview is running. If I close preview before clicking onto the attachment it will open. The second one will fail again.

Same for other attachment types than pdf: But: With xlsx Excel ask for permission instead of failing to open.

Renaming the temporary directory so Outlook has to create a new one doesn't solve the problem.