Help with Winmail.dat

[Mickey A.]

I have recently migrated to an Exchange server, but I have been told by my
email recipients that they are getting Winmail.dat. I thought MS fixed this
issue many moons ago. Since I was running Outlook 2007, I thought there may
have been some incompatibilities with some of my HTML email that I forward
and/or send. So I downgraded back to 2003. That didn't seem to help.

I am at a loss as to what I can try next. It is so irratating. For now, I am
using an IMAP config with my Windows Mail but I obviously lose so much
functionality this way.

This just has to be resolved and overcome by someone or some patch.

Please share.

--Mickey

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

What version of Microsoft Exchange are you using?

 

[Mickey A.]

Backend is 2003. I actually had a choice when setting up. I can't remember
the pros and cons but something led me down the 2003 path.

The frontend(Client) I have tried 2007 and then downgraded back to 2003
mainly due to HTML reading issues and perceived WINMAIL.DAT issues. As I
found out the 2003 client has the same issues.

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Things to check on Exchange server...

* Start Exchange System Manager and go to Global Settings > Internet Message
Format > right click on Default and select properties
* Go to Message tab. Mime bubble > Both bubble. Charsets at bottom
should be Western European (ISO-8859-1) for both (assuming english
system)
* Go to Advanced tab
* Under Exchange Rich Text, Determined by Individual User settings bubble


Things to check on Outlook 2003 client...
* Tools > Options > Message format tab > Set message format to HTML
* Tools > Options > Message format tab > Internet Format button. Middle
area dealing with Rich text, set to convert to HTML format
* When addressing message and items comes from a contact record, go to
contact record in question and open it. Double click
on e-mail address. It should *not* be set to Outlook Rich Text for
internet format
* Not sure if you use fancy signatures in Outlook that contain images, but
if you do you might have to disable Word 2003
as your e-mail editor

 

[Mickey A.]

I don't have any control of the Exchange Settings. Is this something I
should pass on to my providor or is this a standard setup that most HOSTs
will know about.

Interesting enough all my client settings were set per your bullets below.
However, my contact records were set to RTF in the contact. I set up a temp
account on Yahoo(where one of my complaints were coming from) and WHOA!!!. I
can recreate the problem as long as send from my contact list. If I were to
send to the account w/o being in my contacts it sends just fine.

Is there a way to do a mass change on my contacts to ensure that it is not
set to RTF. I change to "let Outook decide". I was thinking that it would
use the client settings as outlined in the FORMAT tabs.

Thanks for all your help.
--Mickey

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

I'm not aware of a tool that can do a mass change of that property & right
assumption about "let outlook decide".