Where does Microsoft create the Outlook Temporary folder (better known as the OLK folder)??? Or, where does Microsoft store temporary data such as attachments? Where the heck is that PESKY OLK folder??
Answer:
Depending on the operating system, version of Outlook AND user logged in, the OLK temporary folder will be created in a different spot. To find where it’s been created, open the Windows registry using regedit32.exe and use the MAP below:
| Outlook 97 | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Outlook\Security |
| Outlook 98 | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.5\Outlook\Security |
| Outlook 2000 | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Security |
| Outlook 2002/XP | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Security |
| Outlook 2003 | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security |
| Outlook 2007 | HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security |
On my install, (I’m running Windows Vista & Microsoft Office 2007) I found the OLK temp folder at:
C:\users\MrGroove\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\XLCYUT3R
….. phew!
BackGround:
When you open file attachments that are considered safe, Outlook places these attachments in a subdirectory under the your Temporary Internet Files directory as an extra precaution. When Outlook first tries to use a temporary file, it examines the registry to determine whether or not the TEMP OLK folder has already been created. If yes, it uses the folder. If no, it creates a random folder then stores the path in the registry location mentioned above.
For example:
Let’s say your running Windows XP and Outlook 2003. When you open your first attachment your computer will create the following sub-folder to temporary store the attachment:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKxxx
In this example, username is the user name that is used by the person who is currently logged on to the computer. xxx is a randomly generated sequence of letters and numbers.
This information can be very useful and potentially dangerous. For instance, let’s say you open an attachment, make a bunch of changes then forget to save it…. Chance are, you can probably find the OLK folder and recover the document (if you have autosave on).
Now the bad news, let’s say you open an attachment which contains sensitive or confidential information. While reading the document, Outlook unexpectedly closes. In this scenario, the attachment will remain in the Outlook Temporary folder indefinitely because Outlook cannot remove the temporary file while it’s open. Now let’s say your PC is stolen…… Yup, all your documents are just sitting there for anyone to open. Believe me? Just go look. If you’ve been using your computer for any length of time I bet you will find 1-2 dozen files sitting there for anyone to open and read.
At work, I use Outlook ALL DAY. When I upgraded my PC to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, I immediately began looking for the EVER important OUTLOOK TEMPORARY FOLDER in order to 1: Encrypt it using EFS and 2: Find a document which I wrote and somehow lost. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I found the document AND encrypted it without an issue.
In a later article, I’ll explain how to use the built-in EFS encryption features of Windows XP and VISTA to protect sensitive files and folders.
Tags: client, encryption, howto, microsoft office, olk, outlook 2003, outlook 2007, security, temporary folder
Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you very much. Keep the articles coming!
Thanks for the feedback! I had to look for it a bit so I figured others would appreciate it. There’s also a little trick you can do to make the olk folder show up in Explorer. Just delete all the text in the desktop.ini file in the IE temp folder. Makes it easy to find later. I’ll post that How To one shortly.
There’s also a problem associated with this that we ran into recently. We had a user who wasn’t able to open a certain attachment and upon investigation I learned of this OLK temp folder. What had happened was there were 99 files already named like that and Outlook didn’t know what to do about it. Basically what happens is if you open a file that has the same name as another file in the OLK folder, it increments a number in parenthesis.
IE.
OutlookAttachement.doc
OutlookAttachement.doc (1)
…
Outlook Attchement.doc (99)
The problem occurs when 99 files get there, after that it won’t create anymore and gives an error that can be painful to decipher, basically you need to delete everything in that folder every now and again.
The error was something about the outlook temp folder and some rights issues.
Welcome to the site Lizaoreo.
Thanks for the additional information as well!
Lizaoreo, FYI – Based off your comment, I just wrote a new article on this very topic: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/outlook/fix-outlook-cant-create-file-attachment-error/
I’m fairly certain this is what you were referring to.?
This is great information. Is there a way automate the deletion of this directory or a registry setting that limits the max size of this directory and after that it cleans itself up?
Thanks for your help. I found this months before and I opened an attachment yesterday but saved it without specifying a file location. I looked for the file that I changed, did a file search, reopened the attachment, but all my changes were gone. I found your website and found this hidden location and found my modified file. Thanks for your help.
Welcome to the site John!
I’m glad the article was helpful!
I have been having the same problem, but the issue is – that I cannot find the OLK folder to delete the contents…. Windows has hidden this pretty well. I can view other “hidden” folders – but can’t find this one…..
Any suggestions??
-Paul
Hello Paul!
Did you follow the map in the above post? Open RegEdit and follow the map and it should show you exactly where your OLK folder is hidden. Once you have that just Click “Start” -> “Run” and paste in the folder path and you shoudl have your OLK folder on the screen with all the files inside of it. If you still can’t find it, start a new discussion in our Forum and I can continue to help you troubleshoot the issue with screenshots etc… here:
http://www.groovypost.com/forum/
hiya – i’m almost in tears because I”m in a the same situation with Outlook 2007. The problem is, I’m not quite as technically savvy as you guys, and I don’t know how to “open the windows registry using regedit32.exe and use the map’…. *sniff* can anyone explain it to me in lay terms?
Hey all
Just to follow up from my last post, I wanted to share a different way to solve this problem.
So, to recap for those just tuning in, when you open an attached file from an email in Outlook 2007 and then “save” it (thinking its going into a designated location on your hard drive – but its not), it does not save to the temporary OLK directory the same way that it did in Outlook 2003. After the initial panic when you realize it seems almost impossible to find the Outlook 2007 temporary file location, here is a super quick and very easy way to locate the file:
1) Open Google Desktop and search for “content.outlook” on your desktop
2) If you don’t have Google Desktop, install it from here: http://desktop.google.com/
3) Once your search results come up, click on “Open Folder” underneath any email that comes up
3) Casually view all of the files contained in the hidden temporary folder to find the file you thought you’d lost
4) Listen to the angels singing “alleliuah” and smile knowing all is well in the world
Good luck to everyone who experiences the initial terror of this glitch… know that there is hope!
kk
@KrazyKuppy
Hey there KK. Thank you for the post and WELCOME to the site!
To answer your first question, just Click the typical “Start” -> “Run” in XP (or Click the Windows Start Button in Vista) and type in: “Regedit32″. This will open the registry. From there it should be easy to navigate to the proper registry location using the Map above in the article.
That being said, I really “love” your suggestion above for Outlook 2007! Being that content.outlook is in the path of the hidden OLK folder, using google desktop search, windows desktop search or even Vista Search (As I did), once you pull up the content.outlook folder the hidden temporary folder should be staring you in the eyes. For instance, my folder is located here:
C:\Users\mrGroove.groovypost\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\XLCYUT3R
Thank you for the post and helping add to the community here at groovyPost.com!
Hey MrGroove – I’m glad you liked that google search idea. It comes in quite handy sometimes!
kk
There is another way to view where the OLK file is located. Open the attachment and do a “save file as.” It will show the path to the OLK folder before you save it. Click on the down arrow next to save in…viola!
Rob Nanney
Verizon Help Desk Technician (in the trenches)
I just used this to find a “lost” paper that Outlook decided to save to that OLK no man’s land, this article saved me and my project group several hours of work! Not to mention huge demoralization. Thanks a lot!
[...] I have made a small AutoIt script [...]
I have a workstation running Outlook 2003 in XP that would not display embedded images in email, but they would show up when you forwarded or replied it. For anyone else who has that problem, finding and deleting the contents of this folder will most likely fix it.
However, I could not find it using the registry editor. Rob’s (post #15) method worked great to find the folder. Once I deleted everything inside of it; embedded images were once again visible!
My boss (no matter how many times I have told her) opened and worked on a word document through Outlook 2007. I could never find where those documents were being saved. I knew where to look in previous versions to find the temp files, but was pulling my hair out trying to find this one. I found this post and found her files. I am also putting this site in my favorites. I learned a lot today. Thank you very much.
@Dave & Julie
First, Welcome to the site! I’m always really glad to hear when people enjoy the articles! Thank you for the feedback!
easy batch file:
REM This file opens the Outlook Temporary Folder.
cd “%userprofile%\local settings\temporary internet files\”
cd olk*
explorer .
Great thread. I consider myself generally tech savvy and have never had a problem locating the temp folder for Outlook attachments before (in Windows XP, but now I have Vista!). Before looking up this post, I was able to locate the folder by using the “save as” method and manually typing in the location. The question I still don’t see an answer to is why this folder does not show up even with the show hidden files option being chosen. I do not like the idea that there are folders which may contain sensitive data on my computer that I cannot see. It, of course, raises the specter of what other information is being hidden on my computer. I was at least aware that somewhere there had to be an Outlook temp folder. Is there any way to make these “double secret” hidden folders viewable? Has anyone tried to determine what information is being “hidden” in this manner. I don’t want to sound too paranoid but it upset me that Microsoft made this folder essentially unviewable except to those “in the know”.
Thanks for this – really helpful
[...] http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/outlook/find…olk-folder/ [...]
Thanks a lot for the info. Here comes another problem I’ve been trying to resolve. I have Outlook 2007 on my PC and when I create new mail and attach photo file like .jpg or .tif, I just can’t open it to make sure I am attaching the right file before I send it. It shows error saying something like the file can’t be opened and also displays the whole string of the OLK folder. If anyone had run into this problem and successfully solved it, please help.
Thanks a lot..
Is there a way to get the olk temp files to automatically delete instead of trying to manuelly delete them using the method mentions in this article?
db
Hi,
Hope you can help. I use XP SP2 and office 2003. Each time I download or want to open a file in jpeg I get the error c:\windows\temporary internet file\olk12d Not a jpeg file.
Do you know how to fix this as I cannot open any jpeg files
thanks in adv
Oliver
@Oliver – Hi Oliver, that is a very odd error. Are you not able to open any .jpeg files or do you have problems only when opening inside outlook? The first thing I would try either way is to delete the outlook OLK folder.
If you take a look in your registry as explained above, you should be able to find your OLK folder. First close everything, delete the OLK folder then reboot. Hopefully this clears it up. If not, please post further questions in the FORUM.
Thanks!
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Thanks,
-MrGroove