What is "winmail.dat" in Outlook?

[paul horn]

What is "winmail.dat?" When I send out email, many of my
recipients--AOL users in particular--seem to get
attachments in the form of "winmail.dat" (often whether
I've attached anything or not)which they cannot open...can
anyone explain and help me with this? Many thanks.

 

[Andrew]

Winmail.dat is a attachment that contains specific
formatting for Outlook e-mail attatchments. If you are
sending in Microsoft RTF (Rich-text Format), most e-mail
systems cannot open the winmail.dat attachment because it
has the Outlook RTF settings. If you go to tools->
options -> mail format and change it to Plain Text, you
should be ok.