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Mail changes attachment extension

This is so weird... I'm sending an email with two attachments (Word 2004 documents). The file names are

Compréhension de l'écrit B, 2.doc
Expression écrite A, 1 et 2.doc

For some reason, Mail insists on appending a "0" (zero) to the file extension of the first file name, making it ".doc0"' (the second one is left intact). First, I thought it had something to do with using accented characters and commas in file names, but again, the second file name is perfectly fine and its extension does not get changed.

Several recipients use Macs, and there it's not an issue, but WIndows users have a problem because their system refuses to open the file unless they get rid of the "0" and thus restore the proper extension first.

Does anyone have a clue why Mail adds this character to the extension?

Daniel

Dual 1GHz G4 PM and 15" MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Feb 22, 2008 2:39 PM

68 replies

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,952 points

Nov 5, 2008 7:11 PM in response to alexpds

Customer Care, are you reading this thread?

These forums are user to user. To tell Apple something, send it via this channel:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Nov 6, 2008 6:17 AM in response to Daniel Kiechle

Someone might want to test this, but it seems like you can get around this annoying bug by writing your messages in plain text and putting an accented character on the same line as the attachment... it seems to work, but is a really ugly hack. 🙂

Nov 26, 2008 2:28 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

I have the same problem.
But when in menu "Edit > Attachments > Always Send Windows-Friendly Attachments" is NOT set, it works fine with attachments with special characters.

Dec 3, 2008 2:52 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

Most incredibly, this thread extends over nine months and the bug has not been corrected.

Since I bought a new iMac recently, I requested Apple's technical support. I spoke with a product specialist today. The obvious conclusion is that there is a bug in Mail needing to be resolved.

I will keep everyone informed on this thread of the new developments I will have knowledge of, from Apple.

Dec 16, 2008 11:32 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

Well, I don't want to jump to conclusions, but reading about what's been addressed in OS X 10.5.6, it appears that Apple has finally fixed this bug. Indeed, I seem to be unable to reproduce it, but it in my case, it was, shall we say, intermittently intermittent, so testing with just a couple of attachments is not really conclusive.

Before I close this one, it would be cool to hear from others who have upgraded to 10.5.6 to see if the bug is really gone.

Thanks,

Daniel

Dec 21, 2008 7:59 PM in response to Daniel Kiechle

I did an e-mail test with the same two files before and after updating to 10.5.6. Before updating, the two files came back in my mailbox with characters added to their file name extension. After updating, the same the files, with the same file names, came back with the extension unaltered.

Therefore, it seems that the bug has been fixed as it is stated in Apple's update description at the address below.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3194?viewlocale=en_US

Dec 21, 2008 11:53 PM in response to Bernard Desgagné

Thanks. In the absence of anyone stating that they still have the problem and in light of several more tests I conducted myself, I think it's safe to coset this one. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Daniel

COTCOT

Level 1

0 points

Jan 8, 2009 5:34 AM in response to Daniel Kiechle

I've got a 10.5.6 and about a month ago the problem with file attachements started. My word files (.doc) are modified by mail to .oc. I've recently had problems with my PDF files as well. I've tried to pin point when this transformation started, and i think it might have something to do with an update. As the files i attach do not have accents etc., i don't think that the culprit is the language differences.
I called apple today 8th January 2009. They had no solution.
Any ideas? I've just logged on to these forums so i'm probably not aware of any recent solutions. Thanks

Mail changes attachment extension