Winmail.dat attachments

I totally agree with tgodfreyfuse . In fact the whole thread is ridiculous. If I have to use a seperate app every time I need to read the enclosures I am receiving then it makes it very difficult to justify running email on my Mac. If I cannot run email on my Mac then it is difficult to justify keeping my mac.

I have used TNEF's Enough but that is not a good solution. At present I am asking a colleague using Windows to get cc'd on my emails. I have struggled with this for 2 years now and I am going to have to give up and go to the dark side. Windows 8 / 10 wins again over something so stupid.

As has been noted several times in earlier posts some email services (e.g. Google Mail using the web interface or IMAP clients) automatically convert incoming winmail.dat attachments to their underlying formats for you. It sounds from your description like Rackspace's webmail i/f does this too. But that does not alter the fundamental fact that winmail.dat attachents are due to how Microsoft Outlook (on Windows) and Exchange work - they by default use a proprietary message format for rich text emails. It is possible to override this and switch Outlook to use the standard email formats instead but it's not something most users (particularly non-technical users) know how to do (and things like the Outlook auto-complete cache can cause issues here even when the correct Outlook settings are used).

The other key thing to understand with this issue is that it's not an Apple Mail (or Mac or iOS) specific problem, it happens with almost all non-Outlook email clients on all platforms - Windows, Mac, iOS, Linux, you name it. Even Outlook for iOS and Mac don't seem to handle winmail.dat attachments sent by Windows Outlook!

If you look through the previous replies in this thread you'll find links to Microsoft and other documentation for various Outlook releases describing how to fix the problem at that end. There is also a link to the Wikipedia article that goes into the technical details of the issue and how to get around it from the receiver's end.

If you don't like TNEF's Enough then use another utility, there are several available on the Mac and other platforms. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Formatfor more info on what's available.

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.

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.

If files are being converted to winmail.dat files from only a select few senders, here is a possible solution.

If the sender is using a PC, ask him if he has added you to his Contacts / Personal Address Book.

If the answer is YES, tell him to delete your email address from your profile and save your new profile without your email address.

Then ask him to restart his computer and send the same attachment

download and install MS Excel from app store on the iOS device or OS, save file from computer/mac to dropbox app, open dropbox app on iOS or OS device click on file and it should open in excel App on the iOS/os device

I+ve only tried it once but it did work!

I agree with StJohnTiger

The solution helped me, but in another way, i went to the composing page on Michrosoft Outlook,before i send the file i right click the receiver email address and select the "CONTACT OUTLOOK SETTINGS" and i changed the mail format, by default it was "HTML", but on composing page it was changed to "RICH TEXT" 😕. So i select the option "LET THE OUTLOOK CHOOSE THE format".

The winmail.dat file usually appears because various mail programs handle message formats differently. Certain messages sent from the Microsoft Outlook mail program (or a Microsoft Exchange server) may arrive with a winmail.dat attachment if your own mail program is not set up to handle mail in the Microsoft Outlook Rich Text Format.

Unlike plain-text formatting, this Rich Text Format can display different text styles, fonts and colors within a message. The winmail.dat file contains the Rich Text Format information for the message, but usually will not open normally. (These attachments are sometimes called T.N.E.F. files, short for Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format, which is the technical term for the format Outlook uses.)

If the winmail.dat file needs to be opened to read the message or its intended file attachment, there are a few ways to troubleshoot. One is to ask the sender to change Outlook’s settings so that mail can be sent in the plain-text format, and then to resend the original message. Microsoft has information on how to do this at support.micro-soft.com/kb/290809.

Another approach is to download a program that can translate the winmail.dat file. Several developers have created helpful programs that can open the files. The MozillaZine site has a list of shareware for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux systems, along with more information about dealing with winmail.dat files, at kb.mozillazine.org/Winmail.dat_attachments.

Users with Microsoft Word can sometimes get to the text in the winmail.dat file by opening it from within Word and scrolling down through a lot of garbled code until they reach the main content of the file.

To complicate things:

I am IT for a law firm. Without warning a clients iPhone 5 on Verizon using an AOL account started receiving our PDF attachments as winmail.dat.

I sent to her in HTML, plain text and RICH text. All failed to convert the winmail.dat back to its source format..

I tested on my iPhone and iPad w AT&T and gmail. Worked fine. I created an AOL account on my Apple devices: still worked. I took my iPhone and iPad off wifi: Still worked.

She had another email account with her employer and it worked fine.

I have decided that the combination of Verizon, Apple and AOL caused the winmail.dat to be delivered without proper conversion.

So don't tell me it's a Microsoft problem!

What I expect from Apple is just to make it work, not from other users to give me complicated ways to fix what is a blatant flaw to their system. Or even worse, to explain to my correspondents how tom fix it on their ned.

This is precisely the reason I am willing to spend more and be captive of Mac. So Cupertino's brothers, live up to your reputation and make it happen !

Come to find out my Outlook was already set to HTML format but clearing the cache fixed the issue. Thanks!!

In my situation I discovered the solution was to delete the contact card (email contact details) from Contacts within the Outlook client. Recreate the contact and it now works fine. Perhaps I accidentally changed the contact card properties or maybe it became corrupt.

Either case; just try deleting the contact card (remember the contact details) and recreate the contact. Problem solved.

Hope it helps someone.

It has to do with the sender and their outlook settings. This happened to me as well, and I was not able to open any attachments and it would say winmail.dat. Here is the fix:

Tell the sender to go to their outlook setting and do this:

File > Option > Mail > Under Compose Messages section > Compose messages in this format > change that to plain text and save.

Now as test ask them to send you an email with an attachment. You will be able to open, and view that.

For people still having problem with this...

go to the contact name on outlook you are having problems with.. the ones getting the winmail.dat delete them and re-add them.

go to this link under email property contact.

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/outlook-is-sending-winmail-dat-attachments/