I am looking for an Outlook addin that will allow me to play wav files
within Outlook. My voice mail system at work sends the messages via
wav attachments in Outlook. With hundreds of messages it takes me too
much time to open the attachment and it to opens up Windows Media
player and play the message. I want to be able to play the messages
without leaving Outlook and just go from message to message without
program switching.

jb31-ga:

The reason why Windows Media Player opens up every time you
double-click on a WAV file attachment in an e-mail, is because WMP has
set itself as the default player for WAV file types on your PC. If the
majority of the time you are working with WAV files is to simply play
the voice-mail attachments, then the easiest and most efficient
solution is to change your default WAV file type handler to something
that will just play the sound, then let you get on with the rest of
your messages.

Fortunately, such a player already exists on your computer: the Sound
Recorder utility built into Windows. To make it do what you want,
please follow these steps:

1. Open up Windows Media Player 
2. Go to Tools>Options and select the File Types tab
3. Uncheck the Windows audio file (.wav) checkbox, then click OK and
close Windows Media Player
4. Open Windows File Explorer (Start>Programs>Accessories>Windows Explorer)
5. Go to Tools>Folder Options and select the File Types tab
6. Scroll down the list to WAV, and click it to highlight it
7. If it's description is "Wave Sound", click on the Advanced button;
otherwise, click on the Restore button, then click on the Advanced
button
8. On the dialog that appears, see if there is already a Play action;
if so, highlight it and go to step 11 below.
9. If no Play action exists, click New..., and create a new Play
action. Name it "Play", and for the application, use the browse button
to go to your Windows directory (often C:\WINDOWS for most people),
then the SYSTEM32 directory, then locate and select the SNDREC32.EXE
program.
10. After you click OK, the full path to the SNDREC32.EXE program
should appear in the Application field, click OK.
11. With the Play action highlighted, click Set Default (if it is
greyed out, that means it is already the default), then click the Edit
button
12. In the Application field, you will see the full path to the
SNDREC32 program in quotes, followed by a space, followed by '%1'; in
front of the %1, add '/play /close ', leaving you with something like:

  "C:\Windows\System32\sndrec32.exe" /play /close %1

13. Click OK, OK, Close to save your changes.


Now, when you double-click on any WAV file, whether as an attachment
to an e-mail or on your hard drive somewhere, it will be immediately
played by the Sound Recorder program, which will close itself once the
sound is finished.

I hope that this helps you. Please let me know if any part of this
solution is not clear.

Regards,

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher