I have a PC at work and Macs at home. For a couple of years when I send an attached Word or Excel document from work to one of my Macs, the file format is changed to "Winmail.dat". I have 2 colleagues in my office with Macs and they do not experience

Question

I have a PC at work and Macs at home. For a couple of years when I send an attached Word or Excel document from work to one of my Macs, the file format is changed to "Winmail.dat". I have 2 colleagues in my office with Macs and they do not experience

My husband also uses Macs and he has not experienced this problem with attached Word or excel documents.

My office PC is a Dell Optiflex 709 and runs Windows 7 Professional. I have experienced this same problem with an older Macbook, a 2-year old I-Mac, and now with a new MacBook Air I keep all my Macs up-to-date on current systems.

My office PC is running Microsoft Office 2010.

Posted on Sep 18, 2014 10:02 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 18, 2014 10:21 AM in response to Gig Harbor Tina

Are your colleagues and your husband using the same email clients on their PC's and the same email clients on their Macs as you are?

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Answer 2

Sep 19, 2014 9:00 PM in response to FatMac-MacPro

My colleagues at work use Outlook on their PCs as do I. We all use Mac Mail on our laptops. Yesterday I sent my husband a test email from my office to his email (MacMail). I included an Excel and a Word file. The attachment that appeared on his email was one Winmail.dat file. I tested it again from my work PC with Outlook to my new MacBook Air - same single Winmail.dat file. Is it possible that the server at work is somehow affecting these attachments?

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Answer 3

Sep 20, 2014 8:10 AM in response to Gig Harbor Tina

Gig Harbor Tina wrote:

...Is it possible that the server at work is somehow affecting these attachments?

I can't say, but if that's the answer, trying to get it fixed might be impossible. Instead, I'd suggest compressing your attachments to create a .zip file. Decompression at the other end would take no time, and if the server changes the attachment's file type, just change it back to .zip.

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Answer 4

Sep 21, 2014 6:16 AM in response to Gig Harbor Tina

A 2 second Google search yields this... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061 complete with cause and resolution.

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Answer 5

Sep 23, 2014 10:19 PM in response to Templeton Peck

Thanks for your help. Your suggested reference was also recommended yesterday at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. I applied the advice to change the format of email messages sent from my office computer to plain text and it worked like a charm.

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