ATT00001.htm attachment in Outlook when sent with Apple Mail

Hi,

This issue was highlighted previously

ATT00001.htm shows up along a Mail attachment
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8433141

Apple mail compatibility issues / ATT00001.c
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8239867

Both of these topics are locked so I couldn't comment about this annoying issue there and had to start a new topic.

Looks like no-one is able to get to the bottom of this very annoying issue including Experts Exchange who I signed up for to see the answer they had given (their website is ranked highly in Google for this problem).

I thought I would post the comments from Experts Exchange here to save anyone signing up for a free trial just to get their answer like I did...

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Title:
Mac Mail att htm issue in outlook

Question:
I'm using mac original mail software. I did set my HTML style template. The software is best ever.
And works good when I send email to outlook users on PC. However if I attach PDF for example, it does go through and outlook users get it, however when they open message all they see.
- attached PDF
- and att00001.htm file which has inside email text

Not everybody gets idea to open it and thy think it is empty email. The same email will be sent to apple user everything looks properly. Why email text is converting into the htm file? It happens only if i attach something to my message, if I don't then email text is not being converted to htm attachment.

I think there are a lot of user that know this issue, did anybody find a solution yet?

Thank you

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jhyiesla:
I don't think there is anything you can really do about it.

I think that it's how the receivers program is going to interpret it.

For example, I sent an email to my Outlook account from my Mac with just an attachment; no text. I looked at the email in Outlook 2000 and I see the attachment as an item in the body text section of the email. When I look at that same email in Outlook 2003 the attachment shows in the attachment area under the subject line and the body text area is blank.

Then I sent another one with an attachment and some text in the body of the email. In Outlook 2000 I see the text in the text area and the attachment as well as a attxxx file in an area at the bottom of the email. The att file was empty. In Outlook 2003 that same email as the attachment and the empty att file in the attachment area at the top and under the subject line and in the body text area of the email is the text that I typed.

Although Mac Mail uses standard protocols, which is why you can send an email to a Windows PC, it just does some different things. In the WIndows world Outlook and Outlook Express also handle some things differently.

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Goldblum:
Thank you for your reply

This issue makes mail.app useless, do you have any recommendations?
Other client which are as good as the mail.app or would be nice to know what is forcing to convert body text to attachment? I could reduce beautiness of my email template by taking out header (jpg) or not using rich text. What exactly is forcing outlook to convert body to attxxxxx.htm file?

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jhyiesla:
I truly don't know the answer to that question. Sometimes similar things happen coming the other way. I'll get emails in to my Mac Mail that have jpg files and I'll see the actual pictures in the body of the email.

I happen to also have Office 2008 for the Mac installed and when I sent my self a message and looked at it in Outlook 2000 and XP, the email looked "normal" in all instances. The attachment was marked as an attachment, text was where it should be and no att file.

There are other email clients that would probably work on the Mac like Thunderbird... but I'm guessing that you'd have a similar thing as happens with mac mail. Still it might be worth the download to test it out.

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Goldblum:
I used entourage and same HTML template for email and have no problems. It is just so that entourage is as any other MS product "broken" out of the box but did good job and same message is not being converted to HTML attachment when it goes to outlook on PC. I will continue researching internet because it has to be solved. I can't send a message to client without comment to attached invoice. This is so not professional. I will play more with settings of mail.app to see what else can be done to avoid conversion.

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jhyiesla:
Entourage probably works well with Outlook because they're both MS products and MS is going to have somewhat similar looks to all their Office products... although there is quite a bit of difference between Entourage and Outlook.

Here's a link that may help you on your search:

http://email.about.com/od/macemailclients/tp/free.htm