Abiword files blocked by Microsoft Outlook Web Access

I am a student at the University of Kansas and a writer for the
student newspaper, the University Daily Kansan. I recently
experienced a problem associated with Abiword and the university's
e-mail client. I'm researching this problem out of my own curiosity
and potentially as a piece for the newspaper depending on what I
learn. I'm communicating with the university's Information Services
department about this subject and wanted to gather information and
thoughts from the Abiword community. As information could be used for
an article, I may follow up on any replies and use applicable
information.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, onto the description of
what happened.

I use both Abiword and Microsoft Word for school, depending on what
computer I am using. Last week, I emailed four documents to myself
through the school email system, which uses Microsoft Outlook Web
Access as its primary portal for email access. There were two Word
documents (.doc) and two Abiword documents (.abw). I am using Abiword
2.4.2 downloaded from abisource.com. Later, when I went to claim the
files from the email, I discovered that while the .doc files could be
downloaded, the following message was displayed for the .abw files:

"Access to the following potentially unsafe attachments has been
blocked: Cyprus.abw, History - Bilio.abw"

I have previously forwarded a wide variety of files with the
universities email system and never had a single file blocked. The
.doc files were named the same as the .abw files as they were copies
of the same information. The .doc files were also created with
Abiword. There are two alternative web based ways to access student
email. I tried both of them, and I could download the files. I also
forwarded the files to two other email accounts (a gmail account and a
hotmail account) and was able to access them. Finally, I used the
regular Microsoft Outlook, and was able to download the files off
there also. So it is only Microsoft Outlook Web Access that blocked
the files.

I am awaiting information from my college to determine why these
Abiword files are blocked. Has anyone else experienced anything
similar to this? Can anyone explain why these files would have been
blocked in this one program? Has Abiword been identified as "unsafe"
by other programs?

All comments will be appreciated. Feel free to ask for more information.

Courtney Farr
Columnist, University Daily Kansan
courtneyfarr@gmail.com
cfarr@ku.edu
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Received on Tue Apr 11 19:47:08 2006