How to View Hidden Attachments in Outlook with Simple Way

  

Mark Regan
Published: February 17th, 2026 • 5 Min Read

If you are searching for an important email attachment in Outlook and think it’s lost or deleted, don’t worry; you can still find it in your Outlook. Your attachments are still present in your emails, and you aren’t aware of it. You can view hidden attachment in Outlook.

Microsoft Outlook is a globally used email client for business and individual email communication. It provides verity of features that helps user to improve their work productivity. Like all other features, its Conversation View feature sometimes hides attachments. Due to this, users are unable to open hidden attachments in Outlook.

The Outlook hidden attachment issue mostly occurs when users do audits, meetings, and general productivity tasks, when it’s important to quickly access past attachments. In this blog post, we explain the major reasons behind it. We are using both manual and professional solutions to open hidden attachments in Outlook.

So, without wasting more time here, let’s begin with the major reasons.

Reasons for Outlook hidden attachments

It has only three major reasons due to which you are not able to see hidden attachments in Outlook.

• Email Chains: Sometimes attachments appear missing due to the “Show as Conversations” feature in Microsoft Outlook, and the user thinks their attachment is missing, as users are unable to open hidden attachments in Outlook.
• Hidden Technically: Some of the email attachments are intentionally hidden, such as embedded in email signatures and company logos. Due to which you are not able to view hidden attachments in Outlook.
• Secure Temp Folder: Outlook temporarily stores every attachment you open in a “Secure Temp Folder,” which is hidden on your computer. This is why you cannot see hidden attachments in Outlook.

These were the three major reasons due to which users are not able to open hidden attachments in Outlook.

Now, let’s fix Outlook hidden attachments with the use of manual solutions.

Manual Solutions to View Hidden Attachments in Outlook

You can fix this issue manually by following all the listed solutions below.

1st Solution: Expand Method

1. Open your Outlook application on your computer PC.
2. Click on the white arrow icon next to the email in the thread.
3. Done! Your attachment is visible to you.

This solution expands the conversation, and so all the hidden messages are individually associated with their attachments.

2nd Solution: Always Expand

1. Open Outlook on your Windows PC.
2. Select the specified email from your mailbox folder.
3. Go to the “View tab” and click on the “show as conversation” button,
4. Pick the “this folder” option.
5. Click on “Conversation Settings” and select “Always Expand Selected Conversation.”
6. Done.

This will expand all past attachments in the mailbox automatically.

3rd Solution: Search Attachments in Outlook

1. Open Microsoft Outlook on your desktop PC.
2. Click on the current mailbox search bar of the Outlook application
3. Then, type the command below in the search bar.
   hasattachment:yes
4. Done! Now, you see all the attachments with the mail in one place.

Using all the solutions given above and their methods, you can find you can see hidden attachments in Outlook. But these solutions also have some limitations that you must know before using any of them.

Limitations of Manual Solutions

• If you have heavy email data, then this solution takes up too much of your time.
• When your emails contain many attachments, it might become confusing for you to find the actual attachment.
• The attachment may not be visible immediately in some cases, if you have lots of emails.
• If you have multiple emails with attachments, then it messes up your email account mailbox.
• The solutions given above only work for finding emails that contain attachments. If the email doesn’t have an attachment, it cannot work.

These were the major limitations that occurred while using the manual solutions. However, to avoid these loopholes, you can try the expert-tested solution to view hidden attachments in Outlook, which is described in the next section.

How to See Hidden Attachments in Outlook Professionally

As we have tested all the suggested solutions above to see hidden attachments in Outlook, we found some loopholes that are not secure. To overcome the loopholes of the above-described solutions, you can use BitRecover PST Converter Wizard. This tool simply takes out your attachments without data loss and keeps them in separate folders. It also maintains complete data integrity during the conversion process and gives you results within a few seconds.

Steps of Professional Solution

1. Open the application on your computer PC.
2. Choose “convert configured Outlook mailbox data” and click the Next button.
3. Select “folders” with the attachment and click Next.
4. After that, choose “RTF” as the saving option and set the destination.
5. Finally, click on the next button to start the conversion process.

Done! Your attachments and emails are stored in two individual folders.

Advantages of Professional Solution

• The tool maintains attachments intact while converting PST to RTF.
• You can export attachments from batch PST files within a few clicks with complete data integrity.
• It has a preview option that helps the user to get a preview of mailbox items before the attachment export.
• You can convert PST files into other file formats, such as PDF, EML, MSG, MBOX, and more, using the same tool.

These were the advantages of using the professional solution to see hidden attachments in Outlook.

Final Thoughts

In this blog post, we discussed how to view hidden attachments in Outlook in simple ways. We shared the major reasons that inform us that the attachments of emails are hidden inside the emails. And we are unable to see hidden attachments in Outlook due to Microsoft Outlook’s advanced features. We tested three manual solutions to open hidden attachments in Outlook, and found that the manual solutions are time-consuming, and the attachment might not show. However, using the suggested professional solution open hidden attachments in Outlook easily and quickly.