can't open htm files -why would this be ? could sender have deliberately made them unreadable ????

[intexasatthe moment]

and is there any hope of opening them ?

Received a number of attachments in an email .Can open the PDF ones ,not the ones ending htm .

These are long long awaited and requested from a non UK solicitor and should contain important info which for a long time has been witheld .We think there is a time limit to the issue we are discussing and that the slcr is time wasting .

So it's hard not to think that the files have been deliberately sent in an unreadable format .I'm clueless about such things and don't even know if that's possible .

Any advice ??

[intexasatthe moment]

I don't know if this makes sense but when I say I can't open them ,maybe that's not correct .

They open ,but there's nothing there except a line saying

virus free www.avast.com .

[JohnL]

are they just files created by the virus checker ?

[red devil]

intexasatthe moment Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> These are long long awaited and requested from a

> non UK solicitor and should contain important info

> which for a long time has been witheld.

JFK conspiracy theory takes a new twist!...

[Saffron]

Ask the solicitor to confirm the number of whole files sent?

[intexasatthe moment]

Yes ,I'm wondering about paranoia setting in - hoping someone here can advise before I'm off down the raoad....

[Robert Poste's Child]

Are they sending in HTM because it's online content ie so you can view it offline? If so they'd need to send you it the complete web page or PDF it.

[intexasatthe moment]

Would that be different from the number of attachments do you think Saffron ??

[intexasatthe moment]

are they just files created by the virus checker ? - I don't know ,surely that wouldn't appear as an attachment ?

Are they sending in HTM because it's online content ie so you can view it offline? I don't know ,I don't understand these things .I'm expecting copies of documents ,letters - would that be likely to be online content? Could you explain a bit more ? If someone got something digitally and then wanted to forward it ,would that be online content ?

[Sephiroth]

what size are the files?

If the should contain significant data they will be more than a couple of kilobytes

but if they are just 6k or something the problem is at the sending end

[red devil]

Sometimes an image/logo in the email can appear as a separate 'file attachment'...

[intexasatthe moment]

They're 1 and 2 kb Sheporith .

I didn't know that Red Devil ( and lots of other stuff ) so it would help to know how many files were sent .

There is one ie 1kb "empty" attachment for each PDF attachment .

But there is also a single attschment titled image jpg which is also "empty" when opened .

[red devil]

Such a small file would likely be a logo etc...

[Sephiroth]

Yeah - I would say there is no significant data in either of those files directly

I'd be surprised if they were sending important info in htm files anyway

detach everything into a new folder - open that folder and make sure you can see the file sizes for all files, screenshot that and send the screenshot to the sender and ask them to check their source files

[intexasatthe moment]

I wonder if that's it Red Devil ?

It would be so good to know - we are struggling ,without legal help ,to deal with inherited land abroad ( used to be an associated state with Britian and follows UK law ) .

[intexasatthe moment]

ask them to check their source files - um ,sorry to be dense ,but what would they be checking for ? Would it be to see if the 1 and 2 kb files were supposed to have other info/meant to be larger ?

This is hard to explain may not be relevant /only of interest if like me you don't have a life but

We've been askinf for over a year for certain details ,the sender recently said they'd just sent the attachments and quoted a dated email that they were attached to ,we said please resend as not received ,they sent a oneline email saying "Thank You" ,we asked again and got these ones I'm having trouble with .

Anyhoo ...on looking at the dated email referred to ,there was an attachment indication - one of those paperclips - but no attached files at bottom of email .When I clicked on paperclip ,I just got a link to a free virus checker .

[Sephiroth]

If I was sending you certain documents - let's say a mortgage deed and a covering letter - I would have both files in a folder and I could see the deed was (let's say) 1mb and the covering letter was 97k

So if I sent them to you but you are saying you only have attachments with a size of 1 and 2k we would know the problem is not your ability to open the files, but the fact that either my security, your security or your service provider were stripping out the important documents

But if you had file sizes the same as me and you couldn't open them then I would say the problem is definitely on your side

So it's about determining where the problem is, to better fix the problem

[intexasatthe moment]

Thank you so much Sephiroth that's so clear ,it's lovely to be able to understand something .Do you teach this stuff ?

And huge thanks to Red Devil and Robert Poste's Child as well for bothering to try and help .

[JohnL]

Avast inserts a footer when it virus checks - could that be the file you see ?

https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/97/

https://superuser.com/questions/1066611/how-does-avast-add-a-signature-into-my-webmail

[ianr]

Open them in a text editor, such as Notepad, to see what they contain.

[intexasatthe moment]

John ,I think you're right there's a line saying "virus free 2 and then the virus checkers web address .

I have opened them in Notepad with no content displayed .I think as said upthread that the size of the attachments - 1 and 2 kb indicate that they don't contain anything .

[DulwichFox]

HTM Files are different to HTML files.

HTM files open full page and do not have the usual headers that allow you to Maximise Minimise

Also you cannot close them because there is no 'X' in the top right corner.

Some Browsers might not open them.

You could rename them to HTML and see you can then open them.

DulwichFox

[Loz]

DulwichFox Wrote:

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> HTM Files are different to HTML files.

No they are not, Foxy. HTML and HTM are synonyms are far as file suffixes go. It's just because in the older Windows days, when it was just a graphics layer on top of DOS, it could only deal with suffixes up the three characters. You could tell if the server was running IIS or Apache. These days you don't see htm as much.

[DulwichFox]

Loz Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> DulwichFox Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > HTM Files are different to HTML files.

>

> No they are not, Foxy. HTML and HTM are synonyms

> are far as file suffixes go. It's just because in

> the older Windows days, when it was just a

> graphics layer on top of DOS, it could only deal

> with suffixes up the three characters. You could

> tell if the server was running IIS or Apache.

> These days you don't see htm as much.

Hi Loz, Yes, you are absolutely right..

I was thinking of HTA files which are different and can cause problems when opened in a browser.

Foxy

[intexasatthe moment]

Thank you summer .I'll have a go .