winmail.dat from Outlook User

[Regina Litman]

Hi,

For reasons I'd rather not go into right now, I use Netscape 7.0 for
reading my email at home (although I do use Outlook at work and I prefer
IE 6.0 for web browsing). My operating system is XP Professional,
although I use it more like a Home user.

I am serving as an officer in a community organization. Another woman
who is also serving as an officer in this group sometimes sends out
emails with attachments. I noticed from her headings that she is using
Outlook. Every time she sends an attachment, it comes into my computer
called winmail.dat, and I can't open it to use as intended. Last week,
when I was at a meeting of this group, other people commented on some of
the attachments she sent, so at least some people are able to open them.
Maybe they are using Outlook, too.

Does anyone know what is causing these winmail.dat documents to appear
and if there is anything I can do (NOT INCLUDING switching to Outlook
for my email, and not including having her use my work email address
because we are not allowed to get non-work-related emails there) to get
them to appear correctly?

Conversely, is there anything I can send to her to help her configure
her system differently so that the attachments come to me properly? I
don't know what version of Windows she's using.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me on this.

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

Tell her to change her message format from Rich Text to either HTML or Plain
Text. Netscape can't read Rich Text messages -- it's a proprietary Outlook
format -- and any attachments will be stripped on your end.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please
reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


In

 

[Andy Dunn]

I have this problem too. I work for a training charity and
send a lot of attachments and am constantly being asked to
send in another format. Sometimes people can't read .doc.
sometimes .rtf and sometimes excel files. IS there any
surefire way of getting the mail through?

 

[Regina Litman]

Tell her to change her message format from Rich Text to either HTML or Plain
Text. Netscape can't read Rich Text messages -- it's a proprietary Outlook
format -- and any attachments will be stripped on your end.

Thanks for this suggestion. Can you either post here or, if it's been
posted here before and is repetitive old news for all the folks who hang
out here, email me (note my correct address below) with the step-by-step
instructions she can use to configure her Outlook to do this?

Thanks in advance for the step-by-step instructions.

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

Well, in Outlook 2003, you'd go to Tools | Options | Mail Format tab, and
switch to either HTML or Plain Text in the "Compose in this message format"
box. Plain Text is almost foolproof since just about any e-mail program
should be able to read plain text messages (and some people don't like HTML
so they turn it off). The exact command may vary for older versions of
Outlook, and you didn't say which version your co-worker is using. Also
note that she should use the Outlook editor for her message, not Word. (The
checkbox for this is in the same location as the other one.)

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please
reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


In

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

Send in plain text...that should work for just about everyone. Also, don't
use Word as your e-mail editor. If that doesn't work for a certain
recipient, we'd need more information on exactly which programs each user is
using, what format the message is being sent in, whether or not the
recipient gets an error message, etc.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please
reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


In