Thanks, lehua. Here are my responses: I'll try to have photos posted tonight. I am not the original owner. I don't know of any regrading of the lot. I think I am at a downslope from A, B, C houses, but my neighbor to the right (D) is about the same. A, B, C are older homes. Myself and D are a newer row of homes (more homes to the right; about 6) that were built in 2000 or so. I would estimate that the ABC homes were built in the 50s. Parking lot is about the same level as my yard. The parking lot is for a fire station next to us. It may be a while to dig that 18" hole! I am in the DC suburbs. Right now, all the moist soil/water has frozen so it may not be a good time of the year to do a percolation test. Before this current period of sustained freeze, we had a lot of rain for December (about 7 inches and we average around 3 for Dec.). I did core aerate/reseed the yard this past spring, which I thought could breakdown the clay soil & absorb more rainwater. However, this won't work in December where we have short days and no warming/evaporation of the water. the lawn is probably less thirsty in December. This may or not matter, but one of the original owners of one of the our generation homes next to us told me that the land where they built our homes used to be a city park. The park was next to the firestation. Also, when I dug out the long french drain, I kept getting my shovel jammed with many rocks. Some as big as fists.

It would be helpful perhaps if we knew the 3 digit extension on the file name. Or is this for more than one kind of file? If you were sending a .jpg image there would/should be no problem but if you are sending with a Mac specific extension then PC users would not likely be able to open the attachments. I am not a Mac user but am trying to assist my sister who has bought an iPad2 having never owned a computer before so the going is tough.

bob - I have 07 and that's why I couldn't figure out why I was having a problem. I just went to "help" at the top of Microsoft Outlook and clicked on Office Diagnostics and told it to diagnose and fix any problems. It went through the process and said there weren't any problems to fix, but now it works. I hope it sticks. Any ideas why that happened though? Laurie

What was the suffix on the original email you could not open? Was it .pps - .ppt - or was there an additional x on the end of either suffix? You cannot simply change a suffix, all that does is ruin the file entirely. If you have MS Office you do not need Open Office. However if it is an older version (97, 2000 or 2003) and you receive a PowerPoint 2007 presentation it may not work. You can download the stand alone player from Microsoft from the link below. Take a look here and see if that cures your problem. PowerPoint presentations are among the best emails you can get in my opinion. The program was and still is basically a program for the office environment but many have found it an excellent way to show off family or scenery photos. Here is a link that might be useful: PowerPoint 2007 player