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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

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.6), None

Posted on Mar 20, 2009 9:59 AM

Reply
27 replies

Jun 6, 2009 2:33 PM in response to hazrd

As mentioned, Outlook is not email standards compliant. It probably never will be based on Microsoft's history. However, I think there are various issues involved in the problems people have. I often send emails from home to my Outlook account at work. I have never experienced any of the problems that I've seen posted anywhere regarding Mail and Outlook.

My conclusion is that there are issues with certain Exchange Server configurations and/or issues with your own ISP mail server causing the issues.

I do have my system set up to Always send windows friendly attachments (from what I've read, this really is 'send Outlook friendly attachments'), and always put attachments at the end. Prior to the 'always put attachments at the end,' I wasn't having any issues, either. However, I read that that setting helped with other email clients, so I use it.

The obvious question is, "well, how is your exchange server configured." I would love to provide the answer to that question; however, I work for a DoD organization, so actually tracking down the person that knows the answer to that question will take somewhere between five years and never. With my 20+ years experience with the DoD, I'm leaning towards the never end of the spectrum. The other half of the equation is, "I'm using cox as my ISP."

Jun 7, 2009 4:09 AM in response to Barney-15E

I tend to agree with you. Outlook is not standards compliant and the past 25 years of dealing with Windows OS and software should have resulted in me giving Bill Gates a very large invoice for waisted time!

However, we who use Macs are finding life a little easier now.

I'd love to remove the current need to use Word for Mac, Excel for Mac and possibly Powerpoint but I can't - yet. Email to Outlook users is also an unfortunate hangover from GatesGate. So until Apple provide a standard workaround, my workaround will suffice. I trust it will help others to become at least less frustrated than they would otherwise.

I use a combination of my own SMTP mailserver (MailServe), O2 SMTP and Fasthosts (POP and SMTP).

As far as I'm concerned, Windows is a transient issue!

Jun 7, 2009 1:11 PM in response to hazrd

Hello there,

even if it may be not really a "Mac issue" but a "Microsoft/Outlook issue", it would be recommended to find a solution. If i send emails to Outlooks-Users (there are tons of them out there...) they dont ask themselves if they have a standard-compliant email client - they just ask me, why i am sending such strange attachments...

Its the same problem for webdevelopers with Microsofts Internetexplorer - if you want to create browsercompliant websites, you have to fix lots of bugs in IE - or you have to tell your costumers that the websites you create will not show up correctly in IE...

@ davidmillermac: Thank you very much for that solution! I gave the Mail Attachments Iconizer a try and it works really fine - no more ATT0000x.htm attachments - working with signature and attachments. The one and only thing which is not possible at all: including an image in the signature. Maybe i have to try a HTML-signature...

Would really be great if Apple could "fix" that problem - maybe integrate the solution which is used in the Mail Attachments Iconizer - we have the option to send "Windows friendly attachments", so why dont fix some more Windows-problems then?

Kind regards,

Christian

Jun 5, 2009 4:44 AM in response to hazrd

Hi,

I recently moved my mail from Outlook on the PC (using O2M) to Mail.app on OS X 10.5.7. It soon became clear that people using Outlook in particular have all sorts of problems reading messages from Mail.app. If you compose a message in Rich Text, with the format text, attached picture (jpg), then text; when received in Outlook everything below that photo will be attached as any number of "ATT00xxx.htm". I initially could not believe that Apple would release software that is so flawed so I persisted with all types of settings; windows friendly on/off, plain text / rich text, I even tried "Mail Attachments Iconizer 2.0". All of this testing gave no joy.

To me the problem seems that Mail.app does not allow you to compose HTML messages. It will allow you to send HTML stationary but this is not the same as an HTML message. To me this problem with mail is intolerable and I have, with a huge amount of reluctance, moved to Entourage. Entourage allows the composition of HTML messages and does not suffer this problem.

Please fix this problem with Mail Steve!

Jun 6, 2009 1:15 PM in response to hazrd

Work around that works for me...
1. Install Mail Attachments Iconizer. Set Let Me Decide and tick all check boxes, put 128k in each of the entry boxes.
2. In Mail, go to Edit, Attachments, set Windows Friendly Attachments and Insert Attachments At End of Message.


1. Fixes empty xxxxxx.htm files being added
2. Stops (not fixes) an issue in Mac mail messages being split when received by Outlook.

Jun 7, 2009 6:29 PM in response to doolak

doolak wrote:
Hello there,

even if it may be not really a "Mac issue" but a "Microsoft/Outlook issue", it would be recommended to find a solution. If i send emails to Outlooks-Users (there are tons of them out there...) they dont ask themselves if they have a standard-compliant email client - they just ask me, why i am sending such strange attachments...

And that is how we get mediocrity. Tell them that they've got crap, and they need to complain to their provider. Why sit back and let it continue?

Aug 10, 2009 7:50 AM in response to Molokoid

Hi
I was just wondering....
If I install VM Fusion and Windows XP Pro on an iMac, and then install MS Outlook 2003 and use that as my email client on my Mac, whilst I will obviously have solved all the problems apparent in semding emails between a Mac and Outlook, will I still be able to find stuff like photos stored in iPhoto to attch to emails I send though Outlook within the Windows environment.

I know this sounds a weird setup, but Mac is best at leisure stuff and MS Office is needed because of incompatibility issues and most of my audience is a business world using MS Office.

Office for Mac is just not up to the job either - entourage is a very poor attempt at being Outlook, in my opinion.

Jan 26, 2010 6:30 AM in response to davidmillermac

davidmillermac wrote:


I'd love to remove the current need to use Word for Mac, Excel for Mac and possibly Powerpoint but I can't - yet.


Have you tried OpenOffice yet? You can set the default saving preferences to save as office type documents (doc, xls and ppt) so that people you share them with who use office can open them. Interestingly the other day I received a document created in MS Works which could not be opened in Word on either a PC or Mac but could be opened directly from within OpenOffice

ATT00001.htm attachment in Outlook when sent with Apple Mail

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