Emailing Office Attachments To PC Users

[s.ballardsignup]

When I send MS Office attachments (Word, Xcel, PP) to pc users in my
office they can NOT open the attachments without first saving to disk
and telling the PC what program to use to open it. Is there a way to
correct this? Shouldn't the PC recognize the attached document? Very
cumbersome. Other than that my mac works seamlessly in my office
environment.

 

[little_creature]

Do you attend the extension to your files?

 

[s.ballardsignup]

Do you attend the extension to your files?

Yes, I am set to append file name extensions. Encoded for:
Windows(MIME/Base64) with no compression.

 

[Diane Ross]

When I send MS Office attachments (Word, Xcel, PP) to pc users in my
office they can NOT open the attachments without first saving to disk
and telling the PC what program to use to open it. Is there a way to
correct this? Shouldn't the PC recognize the attached document? Very
cumbersome. Other than that my mac works seamlessly in my office
environment.

Read over the Compression FAQs for help sending.

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/compression.html>

--
Diane Ross, Microsoft Mac MVP
Entourage Help Page
<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
One of the top five MS Entourage resources listed on the Entourage Blog.
<http://blogs.msdn.com/entourage/>

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

That's a feature of PC email programs. They are progressively preventing
users from opening files in the email. The more up-to-date they are, the
less they can open without saving

It's one of the most dangerous things a user can do: when you double-click a
file in the email, you have no idea what is in it or what it is going to do.

We'll need to start taking care what we do on the Mac soon, too.

Cheers

When I send MS Office attachments (Word, Xcel, PP) to pc users in my
office they can NOT open the attachments without first saving to disk
and telling the PC what program to use to open it. Is there a way to
correct this? Shouldn't the PC recognize the attached document? Very
cumbersome. Other than that my mac works seamlessly in my office
environment.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Axel Hammerschmidt]

That's a feature of PC email programs. They are progressively preventing
users from opening files in the email. The more up-to-date they are, the
less they can open without saving

It's one of the most dangerous things a user can do: when you double-click a
file in the email, you have no idea what is in it or what it is going to do.

We'll need to start taking care what we do on the Mac soon, too.

Not soon, but now.

<http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=20800&pid=142752>

Someone sent one of these to me in an e-mail the other day and I clicked
on the .zip file. The .zip file is 32 bytes long and apparently
"something" was supposed to run, but my patched OS X stopped it. The
vulnerability is from last year.

I still have the e-mail with the attached .zip file if someone wants to
take a look. I can't figure out how it works and would like to know more
about it.

 

[s.ballardsignup]

Thanks to all for the help. One question remains... Shouldn't the PC
user be able to recognize the type of file attached. When the PC user
receives the file they have to select the program to open it. If I
don't tell them what program the file was written in they can't open
it.??

Thanks.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

I'm surprised no one suggested to use the appropriate file extension for
whatever you are sending. For example, Word documents should have .doc,
Excel .xls, PowerPoint .ppt and so on.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

When I send MS Office attachments (Word, Xcel, PP) to pc users in my
office they can NOT open the attachments without first saving to disk
and telling the PC what program to use to open it. Is there a way to
correct this? Shouldn't the PC recognize the attached document? Very
cumbersome. Other than that my mac works seamlessly in my office
environment.

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm surprised no one suggested to use the appropriate file extension for
whatever you are sending.

<snip>

Yeah, little_creature did in the first reply to the OP, who responded:

Sounds like something on the transporting/receiving end is doing a hatchet
job

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Jim:

It really doesn't matter. PCs are not that trusting any longer (at least,
not properly maintained corporate ones!!)

The file extension will be discarded/ignored and the PC will examine the
internal file header to see what's in there. It will then pass it off to
the correct application.

So almost anything that could contain a macro or a java script is going to
be blocked by Outlook and the user forced to save so that the security
software can get a look at the byte stream as it saves to disk.

OS X is about the only thing that makes much use of file extensions these
days -- and even it doesn't believe them

Cheers

Hi,

I'm surprised no one suggested to use the appropriate file extension for
whatever you are sending. For example, Word documents should have .doc,
Excel .xls, PowerPoint .ppt and so on.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

If their PC is correctly configured, they can simply double-click the file
AFTER they have saved it to their local drive. Windows will figure it out
from there.

If they double-click in their email program, the email program and Windows
and their security software should all explain how stupid they are by
issuing an error message.

If the system administrator wants to keep his or her job, there should be no
way you can get a file to open by double-clicking it from the email program.
If there is, look for another job: the company is not going to stay in
business that long

Cheers

Thanks to all for the help. One question remains... Shouldn't the PC
user be able to recognize the type of file attached. When the PC user
receives the file they have to select the program to open it. If I
don't tell them what program the file was written in they can't open
it.??

Thanks.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410