Depending on the operating system, version of Outlook, and the user currently logged in, the OLK temporary folder gets created in a different location. The good news is, it’s simple to find no matter the version of Outlook, including Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016, Outlook 2019, and Outlook for Microsoft 365 (or O365). To determine the spots where folders got created, open the Windows registry using regedit.exe and look for the Registry key OutlookSecureTempFolder using the map below: Using the chart above, here are a few screenshots comparing my Windows XP system running Office 2003 vs. my Windows 8.1 system running Office 2010. And here is my current desktop, Windows 10, and Outlook for Microsoft 365. As you can see from the screenshot, the OLK temporary folder is located at:

Background – What is the OLK folder, and why is it so hard to find?

When you open file attachments from an email, Outlook needs to save the files somewhere on your hard drive before opening the file. To do this, it checks the registry to see if Outlook has already created a temporary folder (aka – the outlook OLK folder) for this use. If Outlook finds a registry entry for the OLK folder, it saves the file and opens it for you. However, if the registry entry doesn’t exist, it creates, it then saves a copy of the attachment in the folder. For example, let’s say your running Windows 10 and Outlook for Microsoft 365 like me. When you open your first attachment in Outlook, your computer will create the following sub-folder to store that attachment temporarily: In this example, the logged-in user’s name would replace the user-name, and the subfolder at the end will be created with a randomly generated sequence of letters and numbers. This information can be very useful. For example, let’s say you open an attachment, make a bunch of changes then close it before you have a chance to save it. Or, perhaps your PC crashes before you can save it. The good news is you can probably find the file in the Outlook Temporary OLK folder and recover your work. Speaking of recovering your data, have you configured the Word and Excel autosave feature?

Now the bad news

Let’s say you open an attachment that 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 since Outlook normally deletes them when you close the document correctly. Now let’s say your PC is lost or stolen. Yup, all your documents are just waiting for the new owner of your PC to find and open them. Don’t think this is very common? Just look. No really. Stop reading and look in your OLK folder. If you’ve been using your computer for any length of time, you will likely find a few dozen files sitting there.

Protect yourself against the OLK folder

Each time I build a new machine, one of the first things I do is encrypt the OLK folder using the built-in Microsoft file and folder encryption called EFS. It’s fast, easy, and adds a nice security layer should I lose my laptop and haven’t had a chance to encrypt my hard drive. Now, if you’re using a home PC and don’t have IT guys managing your system, you’re probably okay with just Wiping your system if you sell it or swap out your hard drive for a faster SSD drive. You have just saved someone from having to re-do a 2000 word doc. Many thanks for the tip Thanks.

  1. Choose an email that contains a JPG attachment, If you don’t have one then send an email from yourself to yourself with an JPG image file attached. 2. Open the email and double click on the image file to open it in windows photo viewer. 3. Right click on the image in windows photo viewer and choose open file location 4. This opens the OLK Folder and you will be able to see the files it contains. 5. Press Alt + up arrow to move up one folder (This displays the OLK folder). 6. Right click the folder then drag and drop it onto your desktop. (You will get a message saying “These files might be harmful to your computer”). 7. Click “OK” then choose create shortcut. Let me know if you have any problems Simon The JPG option took seconds and I found it! So grateful. Darae This halted my near panic attack in its tracks – so you’re my hero :) Thank you much! 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. I’m fairly certain this is what you were referring to.? Any suggestions?? -Paul 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 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! Rob Nanney Verizon Help Desk Technician (in the trenches) 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! First, Welcome to the site! I’m always really glad to hear when people enjoy the articles! Thank you for the feedback! REM This file opens the Outlook Temporary Folder. cd “%userprofile%\local settings\temporary internet files\” cd olk* explorer . Thanks a lot.. db 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 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! I’m glad the article helped out. Thanks for the comment! Will be great if you can help on that. Many thanks …….. :) You should open a different attachment however than the ones you forgot to save just in case they get overwritten the 2nd time you open them. @echo off echo.&echo Outlook Temporary File Cleaner v2.0 by Giovanni Heward&echo. for /f “tokens=5 delims=" %%v in (‘reg query hkcu\software\microsoft\office^|findstr “[0-9][0-9][.][0-9]”’) do ( for /f “skip=2 tokens=2 delims=:” %%f in (‘reg query hkcu\software\microsoft\office%%v\outlook\security /v outlooksecuretempfolder’) do ( set f=%systemdrive%%%f if exist “%f%” ( echo Folder: %f% echo Found: v%%v set /p x = Cleaning…<nul rd “%f%” /s /q||set /p x=Failed!<nul set /p x = OK!<nul md “%f%” cd “%f%” ) else ( echo Folder %f% found in registry does not exist, skipping. ) ) ) @ECHO OFF ECHO.&ECHO Outlook Temporary File Cleaner v2.0 by Giovanni Heward ECHO.&ECHO Cleaning Outlook Temporary Files…&ECHO. SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion FOR /F “TOKENS=5 DELIMS=\” %%V IN (‘REG QUERY HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office^|findstr “[0-9][0-9][.][0-9]”‘) DO ( FOR /F “SKIP=2 TOKENS=2 DELIMS=:” %%F IN (‘REG QUERY HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office%%V\Outlook\Security /V OutlookSecureTempFolder’) DO ( SET F=%SystemDrive%%%F IF EXIST “!F!” ( ECHO Folder: !F!&ECHO. ECHO Found: V%%V&ECHO. SET /P X = Cleaning…<nul RD “!F!” /S /Q||SET /P X=Failed.<nul SET /P X = Done.<nul&ECHO. MD “!F!” CD “!F!” ) ELSE ( ECHO Folder !F! found in registry does not exist, skipping.)) ECHO.) PAUSE I have a similar problem with not being able to find attached files that I have been updating, but I am using Microsoft Live Mail. Any ideas. Russ. thank you !!!!!!!!! This could be a safer way to find the OLK file if you are helping someone over the phone as there is no risk of them inadvertently damaging the registry. Are you opening the jpeg attachment in windows photo viewer? Double click the jpeg attachment to open it in windows photo viewer. In Windows photo viewer, right click the photo that is displayed and choose “open file location”. It opens the OLK folder showing you all the files it contains. I also created a shortcut to the OLK folder like this. From within the OLK folder, press alt + up arrow to move up one folder. Then you can right click the folder and drag and drop it onto your desktop. Mine gave a message saying “These files might be harmful to your computer”. Click “OK” then choose create shortcut. From now on you are just a double click away from seeing what’s in that OLK folder. This site is so groovy I have added it as one of my home tabs This is great information – actually something I have known about for a while as I ran into the issue someone else did of multiple same-name temp files. But, what I can’t seem to find: is there any way to change the default location? I have a user that, no matter how hard I try, will NOT save her files before opening them. She opens, does the File Save As, and always forgets to change the folder. I am usually called up to her office at least 1x – 2x every week to retrieve the files. So, I want to change the location it goes to by default. Is there a way to do this? Thank you again for the information, and for all the other tips and tricks from everyone else! In the registry, go to the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office(version#)\Outlook\Security entry. Double click on OutlookSecureTempFolder entry. Change this to the path you want the files to Save As to as default. For my user, I changed it to her Network Share location: O:\username Now, if she opens an attachment, works on it, and clicks on Save As, the location that opens is her network share. Hope this helps others that might have the same issue. You are a lifesaver! I’m glad my site helped you out. The best way to say thanks is to share the site with friends however. Thank you! -Steve You should add the bit about copying and pasting the file path into explorer. I spent all day working (and saving) a version of a file opened from an Outlook attachment. It completely disappeared when I closed it. Thought I was hosed. My pleasure. I’ve been there before and actually LOST all that work until I figured out this little tip…. I’m glad I was able to save you some time! Welcome to the site! I hope to see you around the comments of some of my other articles! -Steve Ny company’s IT guy does not know about this when I need this help from him. He just simply said that use the “search” function (Windows 7), and if no search result, that means the file had been lost. Fortunately, I did not believe him and Googling for this, and found this page. It was very much my pleasure to help you get up and running again. I’m glad the tip bailed you out! Perhaps you should have your IT guy subscribe to groovyPost! This is a tip I wrote back in 2007 however it’s one of those tips one really shouldn’t be without! Thank you very much for the feedback! This article receives about 2000 views a day so it’s rare for someone to stop and say thank you for the free tips. :) Thanks, -Steve I managed to find the OLK folder, but could not locate the doc file that I have saved in outlook. I am currently running win7 with outlook 2007, and my path looks like this : C:\Users\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\QAO28WO3 Any idea where I can locate the missing file? I have read that the saved files in outlook will automatically be deleted upon exiting outlook, which i am hoping that did not happen for my case :( I tried to follow your article instructions but no luck. I don’t have the document and seetings folder, the folder option is set to show hidden files. Also tried the registry doesn’t find the directory for me. This is on Windows 7 professional version. No sure what to do… Any suggestions. Thanks much Welcome to the site Shakiem. Hope to see you around in the comments on some of my more recent blog posts hehehe -S With very best wishes, and regds Another option is to try a tool like Everything: https://www.groovypost.com/reviews/freeware-everything-voidtools/ Then do a search for the file… You might get lucky! And just an FYI — For anyone who has installed Office 2013 — The Registry path appears to be using the same location as Outlook 2010 for now. I’m going to keep an eye on that as I think that might be because Office / Outlook 2013 is still in beta however when it goes gold, I’ll be sure to update the article. -S
  2. copy/paste what’s between the ~~~ into a .txt file 2) replace (yourname) with your username folder 3) save & rename .txt file to .bat. EG: Purge_Outlook_Temp.bat 4) double-click .bat file to run it.
@echo off
echo Purging Outlook Temp Dir … echo. rmdir /S /Q “C:Documents and Settings(yourname)Local SettingsTemporary Internet FilesContent.Outlook” echo. echo Finished Purging Outlook Temp Dir echo. pause ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Any ideas?
HKEY_USERS/.DFAULT (or a bunch of S-1-5-19 stuff)
or
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Internet Settings
No OLK folder. I also tried the trick of opening a .jpg but there is no Open File Location option when right clicking, and when looking at the properties, the folder path it says it is saved can’t be found:
C:\Documents and Settings\StanleyL\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\EHY6THFS
After Local Settings, the folder optons are only Application Data, Apps, or Temp – none of which lead to the path above.
I am on Windows XP and Outlook 2007. Help!
1. In regedit click on the my computer icon at the top of the left hand pane. 2. Press Ctrl+F 3. In the search box type OutlookSecureTempFolder 4. Click on “Find Next” 5. Depending on the speed of your PC it will take a few seconds or minutes to search the registry. 6. When the search completes you will see OutlookSecureTempFolder highlighted. 7. To the right under the data column you will see the file path to the OLK folder. you might need to hover your cursor over it to display it in full.
Before going to the OLK folder you may need to show hidden files and folders as follows:
Click Start, and then click My Computer. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options. On the View tab, make the following changes: Select the Show hidden files and folders option. Click to clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) check box. Click OK.
You should now be able to find it.
But I guess Windows 7/8 also has revisions however I’ve never found them to be very stable….. but crashplan and dropbox has never failed me.
I lost the saved word document and later found that I didn’t download it to local drive..
Being friday evening it was crazy…
You saved my time..
Thanks so much
When I change the OutlookSecureTempFolder value to the location of the users home, for example H:\TEMP\ the value changes back to it’s original state “C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\QWWCVRG3\”. So redirecting for what ever reason, does not seem to be working ?
Any advice will be helpfull, thanks.
THANK YOU!
Just in case others run into same problem..here is alternative to access your Temporary Internet Files folder.
You are either to paranoid or not paranoid enough. (Your choice)
Besides, unless you have asked IT for assistance in finding a spreadshhet you edited directly from an Outlook Attachment, he doesn’t really care what you have in your mail.
-S
Thanks!
-Steve
-S
Been struggling with this issue for the past four months, on my work laptop. With limited edit permissions and access to hidden folders, it was becoming a nightmare to locate these files, what with my repeated forgetfulness to save files on to a folder. Landed up on your blog, went through the registry process, manually typed in the folder path since my access limitation prevented viewing the Cache folder, reached the goldmine to find months of saved work.
The folder path is now handy on my desktop Sticky Notes so I can continue saving files directly! :D
Works like a dream, thank you very much for your detailed post!
Thanks again.

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