Winmail.dat attachments

Thanks for your reply and clarifications David. That is helpful. I think you are right that telling Outlook users (in this case several of our clients) to change their Outlook configuration may be challenging for them as non-technical users even if they were willing to make that change.

Been having this problem since 'upgrading' to iOS7 on ipad 3 (retina)

I have tried sending a PDF in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text from my work account and all types just show up as Winmail.dat on my ipad. So sick and tired of seeing the suggestion that is in every thready about this:

You might have the sender(s) resolve the issue as explained here:

iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch does not display attachment in email

I have posted in other thread about the issue too. No help given.

Anyone have any ideas?

Well this has suddenly become a problem for me. Not happened previously and now mail attachments coming thr as winword.dat. They originated in right format and other recipients receive them correctly ie word and ppt. I have gone crazy trying to get help and reading all the boards but it is not helping. What can I do?

You might have the sender(s) resolve the issue as explained here:

iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch does not display attachment in email

This article is aimed at Mac Mail, but you may find it informative as well:

Mac OS X Mail: What is a winmail.dat attachment?

Posting this has violated item 6. under "Submissions" of the Terms of Use of the Apple Support Communities.

https://discussions.apple.com/static/apple/tutorial/tou.html

You have advertised your product, which is not allowed.

This has nothing to do with iOS 7, winmail.dat (aka TNEF encoding, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNEF) been a problem for non-Microsoft email apps on PCs and Macs as well as iOS for years and years. There have been plugins, add ons and stand-alone apps written to handle winmail.dat attachments for almost every non-Microsoft email client you care to name and on almost every OS too. There are various extensions and apps for Thunderbird and Apple Mail on the Mac (e.g. the LookOut Thunderbird extension and the TNEF's Enough app for the Mac).

There are several apps to address this issue on iOS too, I use the free Letter Opener app: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/winmail.dat-viewer-letter/id635655539?mt=8

If you don't believe Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2614 or Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNEF or Macworld: http://www.macworld.com/article/1061321/nowinmail.html then perhaps you'll believe Microsoft?: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138053

Your wife doesn't need to use Gmail to handle winmail.dat attachments she simply needs to install one of the many Mac apps that do so, a search of the Mac App store listed at least five of them. Outside the app store there are even more. Do a Google search for TNEF's Enough and Letter Opener Pro for a start. Your MacBook Pro may well have one of the 3rd-party Apple Mail plugins that handle winmail.dat attachments transparently installed?

Simply install one of the many apps for decoding winmail.dat attachments that are available in the App Store for both iOS and OS X. As I said earlier in this discussion I use Letter Opener on iOS and LookOut on the Mac with Thunderbird, but there are many others.

Once you do this you never have to worry about winmail.dat attachmets again.

Jalmolky wrote:

OK fine, its an MS/Outlook problem. So as mentioned before, why did this MS problem only start happening after the only change was upgrading to iOS7? To take it further, also mentioned before I have tried sending in all formats (Plain, Rich, HTML) and no matter which setting it comes as winmail.dat.

It's semantics, but I am of the opinion that fault lies with the party that changed something to cause the error to start happening.

I believe it's just a coincidence that you started receiving winmail.dat attachments soon after upgrading to iOS 7. The problem is something has changed at the sender's end (i.e. your end at work I assume) but not necessarily something that's under your control. It could well be a setting in the MS Exchange server you're using for sending mail that overrides what you are specifing in your Outlook settings. And the Exchange config change happened to occur around the time you upgraded to iOS 7.

E.g. If you read the MS support document I linked to earlier (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138053) you will see that the MS Exchange administrator seems to have control over what format emails are sent out to the internet in via the Internet mail Connector (IMC). He/she can apparently choose to convert all outgoing emails to Microsoft rtf format,overriding whatever is set by the individual Outlook users if they wish. Doesn't seem like a very sensible option to set given that there's no way to know what email clients the receipients outside the organisation's domain are using, but accidents and accidental misconfigurations happen...

From q138053:

Configuring the Internet Mail Connector (IMC)
An administrator can configure the IMC with RTF options in the following manner:

1. Open the Internet Mail Connector Properties page.
2. Click the General tab.
   The Send Microsoft Exchange Rich Text list box controls the sending of rich-text data. There are three values to choose from:
   • If the value is set to User, the recipient properties are used to determine whether or not to send RTF information.
   • If the value is set to Always, RTF information is always sent, regardless of the recipient properties.
   • If the value is set to Never, RTF information is never sent.
   An administrator can also configure the option to send RTF information on a domain-by-domain basis. To define e-mail domains and the message settings for that domain, click the E-Mail Domain button of the Internet Mail tab.

I found a solution that worked for me. I had continuous problems with sending emails from my Outlook 2010 account to my Wife's iPhone 5. I had everything within outlook set up to convert my sent emails into HTML format. This still didn't work. The one thing that many sites forgot to mention is that the Outlook sender needs to clear their cache for that recipient. Doing this now allows my wife to get emails from me without the annoying winmai.dat file. Below are quick steps on how to do this.

How to Avoid Sending Winmail.dat Attachments

Set the Global Properties to have Outlook by default send your email in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML):

• Outlook 2007: Select Tools > Options > Email Format > Internet Options. Select Convert to HTML format.
  
• Outlook 2010 and 2013: Select File > Options > Mail and then scroll to the bottom of the dialog. Select Convert to HTML format.

Meeting requests or voting buttons may not work with this setting, but you can override the format on select messages.

My I suggest my productLetter Opener Mobile for iPhones and iPads. Or for MacsLetter Opener Pro, which converts winmail.dat files right inside Mail application, and Letter Opener Lite.

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

<Edited by Host>

I have to say; iOS7 is annoying. I've found nothing useful about it.

In any event, I just downloaded this app: WinMail.dat Viewer for iOS 7 and it's working great! It cost 99 cents and was well worth it.

So far I can open Excel files that have come in as WinMail.dat attachments. I will test it out on the other attachments I get. I'm hopeful!

Hope this helps!

Hey,

Problem solved. It was easy : )

Just change your email format to 'Plain Text' or 'Text Only' or 'Text' depending on what email program you are using.

I was trying to send myself an email contact from Outlook and although it was attached as a .VCF file when I received it on the iPhone it had morphed into the dreaded winmail.dat file. I was sending with Outlook and the default email type is HTML and the iPhone doesn't know what to do with it or apparently, how to get the attachment from it.

I just changed my email type to Plain Text and it came over as the VCF file I needed.

Really Nice:

To add all your Outlook contacts to your iphone select all your contacts and then use the option to forward them as V-Cards. When the email comes up be sure to change the format to Plain Text. Then send it to an address on your iPhone. You will have to add each of them one by one or.....

In Outlook select all the V-Cards and press Copy. Create a new folder on the desktop and Paste them into it. Then go into a cmd prompt by typing cmd at a Run prompt (Windows Key plus R), navigate the command prompt to where you saved your V-Cards and use this command:

COPY *.VCF ALLCARDS.VCF

This will create on file with all the V-Cards. Now just attach this single file, being sure to change the format of the email to Plain Text again, and send it to your iPhone.

Now when you open the email it will ask you if you want to add all the contacts at once. I choose the option to Merge the Contacts since it creates new ones for those that are new anyways and updates those you already have.

This is the solution to getting winmail.dat files on your iPhone, or anyplace for that matter!

No app needed.

Hi - I receive emails from lots of PC users with Office attachments. No problems with any of these except one. Suggest that it is a setting in their Outlook that is causing this. and not, as some seem to quickly jump in and say, a problem with iOS7.

We used to see this more often, but not until recently has this only happened with one persons email from outlook. The email attachment is winmail.dat both on the email server (ie on our pop server using webmail) and our Mac mail clients, which tells us it is winmail.dat before hitting a Mac computer. It's definitely an Outlook problem.