I had a user receive an attached file in Outlook. The Excel spreadsheet was needed for budgeting or something important. The user opened the attached file, edited the file, and then clicked Save. The user then closed out of Excel.

This user needed to send the edited file back to the original source but could not locate said file. They said at their old job the file would automatically update in their outlook and they could just forward the original email back to the source and everyone would be happy. So I had the task of locating this important file.

Here’s where I looked:
Outlook 2003
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLKRandomNumbers

Outlook 2007
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\RandomNumbers

Vista/Windows 7
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Outlook\xxxxxxxx

But I couldn’t find the documents in question. So I dug a little deeper and found if the user had edited the registry, they could point the temporary files toward another directory.
Outlook 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security

Value Name: OutlookSecureTempFolder
Data Type: REG_SZ
Outlook 2007
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Security

Value Name: OutlookSecureTempFolder
Data Type: REG_SZ

And thus I found the files, and all was great again!