attachments garbled, unreadable

Susan,

Welcome to the Discussions.

This is a known problem with Mail 2.0, and IMAP accounts, and it has been reported to Apple. It is not present with all IMAP servers, but is with lots of them, and always the same account can be accessed with Mail 1.3 in Panther, and work as you have experienced.

I know of no workaround, except those you cite, and this will have to be fixed in some future update, in my opinion.

Ernie

Susan,

I should have added, more clearly, that size of the attachment is a factor in some tests I have done to replicate this issue. Smaller files will often work, but not larger ones.

All the best,

Ernie

I am recieveing coded, garbled, attachments. Was told to talk to provider. Cox Communications informed me they are having a problem with Macintosh about e-mail attachments being sent to Mac users via pcs. I did not purchase this G5 with any idea I would have a problem such as this.I can purchase a 500$ to 1000$ pc and not have this problem. Your service rep patiently spent an hour or more trying to rectify the problem. At that point she suggested I call the provider Cox Comm. I need an answer as this has become a big frustration.

Greensideout,

Welcome to the Discussions.

Since you have referenced Cox Communications, I suspect you are NOT using an IMAP account, but rather a POP -- is this correct?

If my assumption, above, is correct, then this topic is not well suited to your issue, but since it is currently quite short, we can continue.

More information is needed, but I am confident we can assist in your problem.

What is the extension of these files as you receive them, and is that different from what you know it should be? Are they .doc, .pdf, .jpg, etc? Is the sender in a corporate setting, which might involve the use of an Exchange Server. Some issues can arise in such a setting, and are not necessarily exclusive to recipients using Macs, but may impact those with Windows, and certain mail clients.

More info, please.

Ernie

I am having the same problem with e-mail attachments I send whether it's from Mail or Entourage, ever since upgrading to 10.4. It happens randomly. My attachments sometimes go through and sometimes they don't, they become unatacched and instead of an attachment, recepientreceives this message:

This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

--B 32300431951484520
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

The e-mail body message I write appears here... followed by what you see below.


--B 32300431951484520
Content-type: application/msword; name="Smart Borrower Spanish.doc";
x-mac-creator="4D535744";
x-mac-type="5738424E"
Content-disposition: attachment
Content-transfer-encoding: base64

0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAiAAAAAAA
AAAAEAAAigAAAAEAAAD+////AAAAAIYAAACHAAAA///////

And the garble continues.

My mail server is bellsouth.net a POP server. Bellsouth says every thing from their end is fine. Also checked with Microsoft and they say it's a server issue. In the meantime I'm stuck in the middle.

I did find in discussion groups others having a similar problem with an IMAP mail server as well as POP, but no solution was given.

My clients are getting frustrated too because I continue sending worthless files.

Please help I invested too much $$$ on this computer and programs to be having problems like this. Should I just downgrade to 10.3?

Im desperate Please help!

Tanya

Tanya,

Your problem with sending attachments is unrelated to whether you have a POP or IMAP account, and is different from what has been discussed in this topic, thus far.

Your problem is more likely the result of the combination of Rich Text and attachments, together with some source of mixed fonts in Rich Text such as in a Signature. This is known to impact recipients using Outlook or Outlook Express, and to have arisen in Mail 2.0.

Try sending to these recipients using only Plain Text. You can either select to this for all messages in Mail Preferences/Composing, or as you compose a single message by clicking on Format in the Menubar, and choosing Make Plain Text.

Ernie

I've tried that and it doesn't seem to make a difference. Also with Entourage I tried sending in HTML format, but it's the same. Sometimes it works and others it doesn't. It seems to be random no matter how I change settings and formats. I'm really going crazy. My husband has a pc and doesn't seem to be having this issue. Do you think I should just downgrade for now to 10.3?

Tanya,

You should not have to downgrade to resolve this, and I find Mail 2.0 to be better for sending, so we need to analyze your problem. What type of attachments are you typically sending, that fail in this manner? Are you doing any resizing of attached files while in the Compose window?

I probably can more quickly find out what is causing the problem, if you send me an email, with attachment, exactly as you have been attempting. My email address can be found by clicking on my name to the left of this post, and looking in the bio line of my Profile.

Ernie

Thanks for offering to help. I truly appreciate it.
I will try using Mail 2.0 without Rich text format as you suggested to see if it helps. I've been using mainly Entourage and had never had a problem before. Although it also happens with Mail, I believe that when I used it I had not paid attention to the format. I need testing it the way you suggested. Let me try it out today and tomorrow to see what happens. If I continue having the problem I will e-mail you. The odd thing is that it doesn't happen all of the time, but most of the time. It seems to happen less with Word documents, maybe because they are smaller. But it happens mostly with Excel, Powerpoint and JPGs, or at least those are the types of files I usually send. Next few times I need to send a work file I will bcc you to see what happens. Hope you don't mind.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Tanya 🙂

Tanya,

I will not mind.

Ernie

Thanks again for all your help. Just wanted to let you know that since I switched from Entourage to Mac Mail turning off RTF, all my attachments have been received fine. I sent out many Friday and today. I was never able to resolve the issue with Entourage which I like better, maybe because I'm used to it. Anyhow, if you guys hear of a fix with Entourage, please keep me posted.

Thanks again for all your help.

Regards,

Tanya 🙂

I have an AOL account (IMAP server) that I access via Mac Mail.

I also get big attachements that come in as unreadable text in the body of the e-mail. But this is infrequent, but persistent. I've not been able to pin it to one source or type of file.

The other problem I get is often the mail comes in "blank" there is nothing (or only header text) in the mail I open with Mac Mail.

The interesting thing is that I can go to my AOL account and log on there via my ISP (the same one that I go though to get Mac Mail) and both of these problems go away (they are okay when viewed via AOL mail client).

Today I got one of the "header only" problem e-mails. I went to AOL and could read it. So I forwarded it back to my AOL account and when opened the second time from Mac Mail, it was all readable. Can someone explain???

More importantly, can someone explain what I need to do in Mac Mail to be able to consistently read incoming files.

Here is the text of what my e-mail looked like in the Mac Mail after it was forwarded back following my opening it in AOL. I have cut off some of the text to reduce the length of the e-mail, but have kept in the headers as they may contain useful information:


---------------------------------------------------------------

From: SailFaster@aol.com
Subject: Fwd: [PRAF] Fwd: 2006 Governor's Cup 1st Call - Wae River YC
Date: May 16, 2006 1:01:37 PM EDT
To: SailFaster@aol.com, pduncan@toad.net


In a message dated 5/16/06 10:28:01 AM, us8026@yahoo.com writes:

Note: forwarded message attached.

X-Apparently-To: us8026@yahoo.com via 209.73.179.84; Tue, 16 May 2006 06:47:50 -0700
X-Originating-IP: [64.12.137.4]
Authentication-Results: mta237.mail.re2.yahoo.com
from=aol.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 64.12.137.4 (EHLO imo-m23.mail.aol.com) (64.12.137.4)
by mta237.mail.re2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Tue, 16 May 2006 06:47:50 -0700
Received: from Kleinrkr@aol.com
by imo-m23.mx.aol.com (mail out_v38r7.5.) id i.45a.743c12 (29672);
Tue, 16 May 2006 09:47:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kleinrkr@aol.com
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 09:47:25 EDT
Subject: 2006 Governor's Cup 1st Call - Wae River YC
To: jrdelaware@hotmail.com, us8026@yahoo.com, leigh.morgan2@verizon.net,
William.Carnell@lw.com, RLMontegue@HHLAW.com, mojack2@juno.com,
mobjack45@cox.net, m.p.saunders@larc.nasa.gov,
hubbard@fidelitymgmtgroup.com, mcbear@earthlink.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="-----------------------------1147787245"
X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5057
X-Spam-Flag: NO
Content-Length: 2280






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