I've installed Service Pack 2 for Office 2000. Why can I no longer open any executables people send me?

This problem can be fixed if Outlook is running under Exchange. Microsoft offers administrative tools to manipulate restrictive file access. It may be possible that the tools could work on a stand-alone PC, although I have not tested this option.

I believe if you connecting your Outlook 2000 client to an Exchange server you can make amendments to the way the security feature addresses .exe attachments. In other words you can set this feature to rather force you to save the .exe to your hard drive (security level 2 file) as apposed to removing the attachment all together.

My understanding from the MS web site is, if you are using your Outlook mail client to retrieve mail from an ISP, then you will have to remove Office altogether to ride yourself of this security feature.

This is not true. Even ZIP files are blocked from being opened. You need to add some registry keys in order to override this behavior; you do not have to uninstall Office. MS has a KB article on the registry tweaks.

When I first started working with Exchange 5.x I started installing Outlook from the Exchange Service Pack disks and not from the Office install. I did this even on Computers that used internet only. The reason for this was early experience with Office 97 SR1 and details from a site called www.slipstick.com, that had warned of features that the Office Service Releases add. This will allow you to install the service releases for Office without effecting the install of Outlook. Office and outlook will have differenct setup and thus differenct .stf files. I can then selectively add the security features from the Microsoft Security Bulliten site http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/current.asp, that meet my needs for Outlook.

There is a workaround:
You can also find the executable attachment in your temporary internet files folder.
Locate it by the name Outlook claims to have blocked.