Winmail.dat attachments

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Ok, I'm also having trouble opening PDF attachments. And after reading many of the comments here it seems I have to download a windat reader? "Really".... I need to open a PDF "within my inbox" is that not possible now??? I also need to open the pdf in "Keynote" so that I can edit the document.

Any friggin suggestions? I find this ridicules that Apple keeps changing things and they don't work. The new ISO operating system is less than desirable. What would be the best fix? Help greatly appreciated....

You should need nothing extra or new to open a pdf attachment, this discussion applies *only* to winmail.dat attachments, not .pdf, .jpg, or any other file type. If you're having issues with pdf attachments then this is not the forum for your problem.

Yep, I cannot open winmail.dat attachments. Somehow my PDF files convert

To the winmail.dat file format and I cannot open them on my iPad .

?....? If I send a PDF ( via outlook) when I get the email on my iPad

It comes in as a winmail.dat file. This has somehow changed.

Never used to do that.... what happened? iOS 7?...

It's a pain. Do I need to use a gmail account to send PDFs to my iPad now?

And if so , "why"?

I need to get PDF files on my iPad ,and be able to open them

In keynote to edit them.

This is a problem at the Microsoft end, the end where you send the email using Outlook/Exchange. Apple Mail has never handled winmail.dat attachments, nothing's changed at Apple's end. You've always needed extra apps to decode them when you're using non-Microsoft email clients like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. The best option is to reconfigure your Outlook client or Exchange server so it doesn't send the winmail.dat attachements in the first place, if you can (not always possible if your Exchange administrators have other ideas).

Go back and look at the earlier posts in this thread and read the links I already added about what causes Outlook to send emails with winmail.dat attachments; basically it's when you tell Outlook to send an email in Rich Text Format instead of plaint text or HTML format. RTF emails result in Winmail.dat attachments, they're a proprietary file format used only by Microsoft email clients like Outlook and Microsoft Exchange email servers.

David Shanahan said:

Go back and look at the earlier posts in this thread and read the links I already added about what causes Outlook to send emails with winmail.dat attachments; basically it's when you tell Outlook to send an email in Rich Text Format instead of plaint text or HTML format. RTF emails result in Winmail.dat attachments, they're a proprietary file format used only by Microsoft email clients like Outlook and Microsoft Exchange email servers.

If you read this thread & others on the subject closely, the problem with what you suggest is that myself and others have tried various mail settings, we've checked to make sure there weren't specific settings in place for particular contacts, we've contacted admins to make sure they are no over riding the user settings, all to no avail.

Sure there are work arounds, stand alone apps, converter websties, etc, but what did Apple change in the new iOS that made this all of a sudden start happening to a bunch of different people?

My outlook is set to send all emails in HTML . So, apparetnly that does not work either. I guess I could change it to send in plain text, but that's not ideal for my business branding. None of my branding would come through in my emails.

I will try gmail on occasions when I need to send the PDF's from my pc to my ipad.. as I see it, its my only option at this point. I would like to know "what" changed.... as I mentioned before, this is a recent change. 5 months ago it was not an issue.

We would appreciate someone from APPLE addressing this very serious issue with us please. Yes, we know there are those who cannot believe that Apple is the problem, but every other MS stone has been turned over -- all to no avail. This IS an Apple issue and we would like APPLE to help us with this right away. Thank you.

I'll repeat this (from higher in this thread). Suddenly about the time iOS was COINCIDENTALLY released, I started getting winmail.dat.

On my laptop... my laptop.... I'll repeat that... on my OS Lion laptop. Until then, I'd never encountered winmail.dat files.

My laptop is still running OS 10.7 Lion with the same Apple Mail it came with. I've not changed anything on my laptop.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061 for info.

I am also having this issue with sending invoices in pdf format directly out of our accounting system and it only became an issue in Nov with a handful of clients so far. They receive the email and the attachment is winmail.dat (even though I sent it as a pdf) when they look at it on their iPhone but on their desk top computer it shows as a pdf and they can open it no problem. I sent the same email to my iPhone 4S with iOS 7 and to my co-workers iPhone 4 with iOS 6.1.3 and both of us receive the email with the attachement as a pdf and can open it. When I check the email in my sent items, the format it was sent in is Plain Text, so the Rich Text issue does not apply.

This is my first time ever posting on a forum so I hope I have done this right.

Thanks

I find it somewhat amazing that a number of posters "claim" that the problem is one caused by Apple - even though we have on the thread the link to the Microsoft Knowledgebase article that clearly indicates that the problem is caused by settings in Exchange/Outlook and how to correct it.

To those who claim that this happened only beciase of upgrading thier Apple OS I make the following observation - every week your Microsoft software is being changed by Microsoft as part of their security patches. So stating that the only thing that has changed has been the move to Mavericks or iOS7 is a bit myopic. One of the key things to look at when investigating incidents is change - and isolating which of the many changes that occur over time is complex but necessary. In my professional life business folk who say "it changed about then I think" and "no, nothing else has changed" are very indicative of the sort of posts we see here.

If you live in a situaiton where there have been no updates to your Windows operating system (including running the older version of Exchange) in the last 12 months then you can probably draw a valid inference. But I doubt many are in that position with automatic updaters like WSUS running.

For those whose Admins claim that they have donw everything ask them to go and read Microsoft KB138053 at http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/richtext.htm

The only thing that I saw in previous posts about correcting the settings in Exchange/Outlook was to make sure that your email is being sent in Plain Text or HTML. My emails are in Plan Text and I still have customers receiving the attachment as winmail.dat and can't open it so clearly that does not fix the problem. And I don't understand why I can send the same email to 3 different people with iPhones and 1 out of 3 has the attachment come through as winmail.dat. I'm not a tech. person and I don't know how all this stuff work. I'm just throwing my experiences out there in the hopes that we can resolve this issue no matter where the glitch is originating from.

I'm having exactly the same problem on my iPad. Like other posters not interested in the apple v Microsoft turf war being played out by some here all I would ask is does anyone know a solution that works?- ie allows me to open attachments sent to me by clients in mail- at the moment I'm having to forward to a gmail account but this only works on my iphone and is far from ideal. If I download one of the letter opener apps will it automatically open winmaildat mail attachments?

Any suggestion that I should phone up my clients' IT department and insist they change their settings for my benefit is not helpful as I will no doubt be told to rearrange some words into a well known Anglo-Saxon phrase.

Hi - the issue is not about your client but the server on which Exchange mail is being sent. While you can set a format in your client program (i.e. Outlook) this is often overidden by server settings. Make sure your technical staff/support/ISP read the KB article before letting them tell you it is your setting or an Apple problem.

Also for those wanting an add-on that enables winmail.dat to be opened - for Mavericks try TNEF - and TNEF Reader for iOS

Doccam, yes there are now a number of apps that serve this purpose. Open from mail into the app and it will separate the winmail.dat into it's components.