Outlook email attachments

Glean indexes Outlook email attachments as separate documents and can retrieve attachment content on demand. Indexed attachments are available in Search and as company knowledge in Assistant and Agents. Live retrieval provides access without waiting for indexing.

Configure attachment access

Attachment indexing is off by default. The Outlook email attachments setting enables both indexing and live retrieval. The control is shown only in workspaces with access to the attachment beta.

To enable attachment access:

1. Open the Outlook connector's setup page in the Admin console.
2. Turn on Outlook email attachments and save the configuration.

The setting does not replace connector authentication or the required Microsoft Graph permissions. Saving the attachment setting does not itself request a crawl. Eligible attachments on existing emails are processed when a later crawl fetches those threads with attachment processing enabled. See Choose your Outlook setup for the connector configuration.

Understand indexing and permissions

During Outlook crawling, Glean creates a separate document for each eligible file attachment, with its own content and metadata and a link to the parent email. Attachment text is not appended to the email body.

Permissions derive from the mailbox copies that Glean crawls. Users receive links associated with their own authorized mailbox copy. Indexing does not grant access beyond those mailbox permissions.

Attachment indexing follows the parent thread's crawl eligibility, including message-history, sender-domain, and product access group settings. Configure allowed sender domains in Manage data where applicable. See Outlook crawl restrictions.

Glean does not index messages or their attachments from the Junk Email (spam) or Deleted Items folders. See Indexing connector setup and reference for folder exclusions.

An attachment becomes searchable after the crawl processes it. A newly received attachment may be available through live retrieval before it appears in Search.

Retrieve attachments on demand

Live retrieval uses the requesting user's Outlook authentication and requires access to the parent email. The connector's product access group and sender-domain restrictions still apply. Retrieving content on demand does not add the attachment to the persistent search index.

Use Assistant

1. Make sure your Outlook account is connected in Glean.
2. Provide the link to the parent email in Assistant.
3. Identify the attachment and the task, such as summarizing the attached document.

Glean retrieves the email and its available attachment references. Start with the parent email link rather than an arbitrary attachment download URL.

Use Agents

Email Search Tool v2 can return attachment references with email results. The agent can use these references to retrieve attachment content for subsequent reasoning. The user running the agent must authenticate Outlook and have access to the email.

Check supported content and limits

• Glean processes eligible file attachments in supported Outlook mailboxes. This path excludes inline attachments, embedded Outlook items, and reference attachments.
• Content extraction, including text from images, depends on the file type and the deployment's content-processing settings.
• Download limits are deployment-specific. An attachment above the indexing download limit can have indexed metadata without searchable file content. Live retrieval can reject a file above its applicable limit.

See also

• Outlook overview: Compare email indexing and real-time access.