I found out how many bytes Access is adding to the beginning of the file (and to the end, but that doesn't matter with PDF, as it only reads up...

I also tried it the BCP way with the same result - the BLOB being extracted, the same size as obtained with DATALENGTH, but unreadable.

I'm thinking this has to have...

JohnG,

I used your sample and it worked to extract the BLOB, but I am unable to open it in the original program.

The way the BLOBs were inserted was via...

Is the email server a DC (Domain Controller)?  If so, is it the only one or one of many?  Is the SQL Server a DC?

If the email server was the...

Also be sure you aren't using quotas on your server... or if you are, give the SQL service account unrestricted space.

Talking from experience

or just set a DEFAULT for that column.

If it's being updated, it would be already there, and the default wouldn't do anything... if it's inserted, it would populate that column...