Winmail.dat issue

calvynlee

I have receive a mail with attachment, and the attachment are WINMAIL.dat, any one have idea why we can receive this WINMAIL.dat?

i have solution to extract the file out from WINMAIL.dat with a free ware call winmail opener, for your information, the attachment is from the person i know, will not be a virus.

Just want to know why we can receive winmail.dat file...any one hv experience on this??

dashday

Email users sometimes find that they receive email messages with a strange file attached, called winmail.dat. When they attempt to open this file, either it can't be opened at all, or it contains "garbage" data.

The situation causing this is that people are using several different email client programs to receive, read, and send email. The most commonly used email client programs at GPC seem to be Microsoft Outlook and Netscape (specifically the Messenger component), with a small minority of techno-geeks using Eudora. Unfortunately, Outlook does not "play nice" with the other email programs all the time. This causes problems, not for the sender of the email, but the recipient, particularly when actual files are attached to messages.
Outlook97/2000

calvynlee

so..any solution?

dashday

If you recieve a winmail.dat file, there are a number of utilities that will unpack the attachment for you:

Linux - Fentun

UNIX - Bob Krzaczek wrote a filter for procmail that fixes this problem.   
Mac OSX - TNEF's Enough
Windows - WMDecode
Sender
The sender is the source of the winmail.dat file.  The only way to prevent your Outlook client from sending winmail.dat files is to make it send all emails in plain text format.  RTF or HTML formatting can generate the winmail.dat attachment.   

Preventing the winmail.dat files in Outlook:  

Select Tools->Options from the Outlook menu bar.
Select the "Mail Format" tab in the dialog window.
In the first drop-down list, under the "Message Format" heading, select Plain Text
Click the "OK" button.