Winmail.dat inconsistency

[mmmmark]

My wife occasionally tries to send a file from her office (on XP, Office
2003) to home (entourage 2004, OS X 10.3.8). When she sends to her identity
it ends up as a winmail.dat file. If she sends it to my identity it is
happily delivered as intended (even if she sends to both in the same email).
Therefore it is evident that the problem is not the sending machine's
settings.

Both of the entourage identities she has tested sending to (hers/my personal
ones) appear to be set up identically. Filetype seems largely irrelevant as
it has happened with .jpg, .doc, .xls, etc. ISP is identical for both of
these accounts--just different user names.

First I rebuilt the database, then I made a new user and copied her files
over into it hoping to solve the problem.and still no dice.

I currently use TNEF's enough to extract the files, but sometimes if I'm not
there, she struggles to make that work.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Mark

 

[Stu Mark]

My wife occasionally tries to send a file from her office (on XP, Office
2003) to home (entourage 2004, OS X 10.3.8). When she sends to her identity
it ends up as a winmail.dat file.

This also happens with me: Wife is at work running Office 2003 and when she
sends attachments they show up as winmail.dat files. I don't have a second
identity, but maybe I'll create one and see what happens.

Stu
(who would like to solve the problem)

NP: Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley

 

[Michel Bintener]

Hi there.
Winmail .dat files only show up if an Outlook user sends you e-mails in RTF
format (maybe there are other situations in which they show up, but this is
by far the most frequent one). Also, if you were using Outlook, you would
not see these files; they only show up in non-Outlook e-mail clients. To
stop this from happening, ask your wives to send you e-mails in text-only
(or, if it is really necessary, HTML) format. However, since you already
have a number of winmail .dat files, I'd suggest you use Josh Jacob's free
TNEF's Enough <http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/index.html> to open
these files.
Hope this was helpful.

Michel

 

[Stu Mark]

Hi there.
Winmail .dat files only show up if an Outlook user sends you e-mails in RTF
format (maybe there are other situations in which they show up, but this is
by far the most frequent one). Also, if you were using Outlook, you would
not see these files; they only show up in non-Outlook e-mail clients. To
stop this from happening, ask your wives to send you e-mails in text-only
(or, if it is really necessary, HTML) format. However, since you already
have a number of winmail .dat files, I'd suggest you use Josh Jacob's free
TNEF's Enough <http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/index.html> to open
these files.

My wife has sent me, for example, a jpg. file as an attachment and I receive
it in Microsoft Entourage as a winmail.dat attachment.

Stu
(who wonders if that makes a difference)

NP: Desert Island by XTC

 

[Michel Bintener]

My wife has sent me, for example, a jpg. file as an attachment and I receive
it in Microsoft Entourage as a winmail.dat attachment.

Stu
(who wonders if that makes a difference)

NP: Desert Island by XTC

Hi Stu,
that doesn't make a difference, at least not as far as I know (read: I might
be wrong, and if so, someone with more experience and a deeper understanding
of this subject-matter might intervene and correct me). The format of the
attachment (jpg, doc, xls,...) is independent from the message encoding
process. You will get these winmail .dat files no matter what the attachment
is, since the e-mail itself is encoded in RTF format. A brief explanation:
there are three commonly used ways of encoding e-mails, and those are text,
RTF and HTML. Text-only means that there is no formatting at all, just like
this post here. Both RTF and HTML allow text formatting, i.e. applying
different fonts, colours, or other formattings, such as making words appear
bold, underlined, italicised, etc.; you get the idea. (By the way, yes, you
can see different colours in this message, but these colours are not
embodied in the message itself; Entourage displays them this way, as set in
your preferences, to make it easier for you to separate newer messages from
older ones.) Entourage allows you to send messages either in text-only or in
HTML format. Outlook however offers a third option, RTF encoding, which is
the source of the problem. Turning that option off, meaning using text-only
for simple messages and HTML for complex messages, should prevent winmail
..dat files from appearing in future messages.
So, have you tried the solution I suggested? And if so, did they work?

Michel

 

[Stu Mark]

Hi Stu,
that doesn't make a difference, at least not as far as I know (read: I might
be wrong, and if so, someone with more experience and a deeper understanding
of this subject-matter might intervene and correct me). The format of the
attachment (jpg, doc, xls,...) is independent from the message encoding
process. You will get these winmail .dat files no matter what the attachment
is, since the e-mail itself is encoded in RTF format.

Hey, cool. I didn't get it before, but I do now. It's the weekend here,
but Monday my wife will be back at work and I'll get her to try to turn off
RTF. Thanks for the heads up.

Stu
(who doesn't know what email software his wife uses, and can't tell by
reading the sourcecode of her emails)

NP: Evening Star by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno

 

[mmmmark]

Hey, cool. I didn't get it before, but I do now. It's the weekend here,
but Monday my wife will be back at work and I'll get her to try to turn off
RTF. Thanks for the heads up.

Stu
(who doesn't know what email software his wife uses, and can't tell by
reading the sourcecode of her emails)

NP: Evening Star by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno

There is a setting in Outlook 2003 at Tools\Options\Mail format tab
(internet format button) that allows the sender to specify what happens with
mail going out of the exchange server environment. This allows rich text to
be used witih colleauges and converts to html or plain text when sending to
others beyond your brick and mortar office walls.

HOWEVER, my original quandry is still unresolved. Why do messages from my
wife's Outlook 2003 messages give her entourage identity winmail.dat files
when it doesn't to my identity (even when both are cc'd in the same
email)???

I don't need explanations of how it works. I understand and it is
inconsistent. Anyone??

thanks,
Mark