Increase the file size limit on attachments

You can increase the maximum size of an attachment or attachments that can be sent in an Outlook email message by changing a setting in Registry Editor. By default, Outlook will not allow you to send an email greater than 20 MB.

In the menu under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Preferences

With this folder selected, go to Edit . . . New . . . DWORD (32-bit) Value and name the new file as 'MaximumAttachmentSize'.

Double-click this new field, so you can edit it. With decimal selected, enter a limit in KB - so 100,000 for 100 MB.

Searching for exact phrases in Outlook

You may have noticed that the standard search tool in MS Outlook 2010 doesn't allow you to search for exact phrases in the body of email messages. Instead a search for a phrase enclosed in quotes will find all emails that contain any of the listed strings. Mircosoft says that this limitation can be overcome by making a change to the Registry Editor. See this posting by Microsoft Support here.

Follow these steps:

1. In Registry Editor go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Outlook\Search

It may be necessary to create the Search folder. Do so by right clicking on the 'Outlook' folder and selecting New . . . Key. Then rename the folder 'Search'. Note that Outlook 2010 is version 14.0.

2. Next go to the Edit menu and select New . . . DWORD . . . and enter a new value.

3. Input the value name as 'AllowPhraseMatch' and set the value data to 1.

You should now be able to search for exact phrases enclosed in quotes in Outlook 2010.

In Outlook 2016 this problem has been solved, and you can search for an exact phrase without making the change to the registry.

winmail.dat email attachment processing error

More than once I've come across email attachments in document productions for which the file name was 'winmail.dat' and the attachment had not been processed. This problem stems from a well-known problem that Microsoft Support has addressed here. Some email clients cannot process emails sent from MS Outlook that are in the rich text format. The message is sent in plain text and the .dat file contains the rich text formatting, embedded images and file attachments. This method is known as TNEF, Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format.

This error causes a minor security breach as the sender's login user name, and .pst folder paths can be found if the file is opened in a text editor.

See this example from the Enron Email data set.

It's hard to say if the EDRM's own processing stripped out some of the original information, but we can see a file path and what may be a login ID.