Entourage X 2008 corrupts RTF attachments

[kf4wvq]

All,

I'm having a very curious problem with Exchange 2008 running on Mac OS
X 10.5.6, specifically with an Exchange account.

I receive daily reports automatically generated and emailed as an RTF
attachment. When I attempt to open these RTF attachments in in
Entourage, TextEdit opens and pops up an error message that the file
"cannot be opened." When I save the attachment to the desktop, I get
the same problem. Additionally, the icon shows up as a generic file,
not as an RTF file. When I attempt to open the file using MS Word, it
fails to recognize it as an RTF file and gives me the "Convert File"
dialog. When I select Rich Text Format, it opens up the file,
treating the contents as all text -- showing me the control markup,
etc.

By now, you're thinking I'm not getting real RTF files... but here's
the rub: When I go through Exchange's web access, open the message,
and save the file, it saves properly as an RTF file. I can open it
with anything (including TextEdit), and it looks great. When I access
my email via Outlook on a PC, there are likewise no problems opening
the attachment.

The only other thing I've noticed is that the version of the file
saved out of Entourage is 3 bytes larger than the file saved from web
email. When I 'diff' them, it displays this:

1c1
< {\rtf1\ansi
\ansicpg1252\deff0\adeflang1025\deflang1033\deflangfe1033
---

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\adeflang1025\deflang1033\deflangfe1033

I've hand-sanned the files, and there appear to be no visible
differences. I'm current on Entourage updates, I've cleaned out the
attachments directory, and I've repaired file permissions.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
nsj

 

[Diane Ross]

When I 'diff' them, it displays this:

Try saving in Tex-Edit Plus or BBEdit. There are options to strip line
endings. I can't remember if it's Unix to Mac or Mac to Unix that needs to
be set.

 

[kf4wvq]

Try saving in Tex-Edit Plus or BBEdit. There are options to strip line
endings. I can't remember if it's Unix to Mac or Mac to Unix that needs to
be set.

No dice. bbdiff thinks they're the same, which they're clearly not:

[spindrift:~/Desktop] nsj% bbdiff entourage.rtf outlookweb.rtf
/Users/nsj/Desktop/outlookweb.rtf and /Users/nsj/Desktop/entourage.rtf
are identical.
[spindrift:~/Desktop] nsj% ls -l entourage.rtf outlookweb.rtf
-rw-r--r-- 1 nsj staff 65409 Mar 18 19:04 entourage.rtf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 nsj staff 65406 Mar 18 18:56 outlookweb.rtf
[spindrift:~/Desktop] nsj%

Cheers,
nsj

 

[Diane Ross]

No dice. bbdiff thinks they're the same, which they're clearly not:

Try changing things and testing to see what works. I use a script that
pastes into a message and I got the same weird text that you described until
I used Tex-Edit Plus to format the messages. It's been so long since I set
this up I don't remember exactly what I changed.