Why do my attachments arrive embedded in the message rather than as "attachments". They pictures have to be pulled out of the context and the  documents can only be read by going to message properties

   Can you explain what you mean by embedded?  Are the attached pictures shown as pictures or strange characters?
   Some of it has to do with how they are sent.  Emails can be composed to have the pictures in the text area instead of as an attachment.  And it is possible that an email would be composed improperly so that it has the attachment embedded instead of attached.
   Also OE shows some types of attachments in the message area of the email instead of as attachments.
   If it is doing this with all attachments, I don't know what it could be.  I am not aware of any settings in OE about this.  Maybe someone else knows more about that.

the attachments come as "attachments" but the attachment and save attachments menu is greyed out.
You can save pictures by "copy" from the body but text can only be rescued from the properties box

   You might check the Options in the Tools menu.  Go to the Security tab and make sure that the "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus" checkbox in the Virus Protection section is unchecked.
   If that checkbox is checked, your attachments will be grayed out.  It does not check the attachments to see if they have viruses in them, it just blocks all attachments of certain types (for example, all exe attachments).
   If you don't want your attachments grayed out, don't have that checkbox checked (if that is the problem).