[arachne] Dealing with winmail.dat and unreadable email attachments
- From: "Samuel W. Heywood" <sheywood@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:13:56 -0500
Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 08:26:23 -0500, I wrote in a reply to Joe da Silva
on subject "Base 64 Test":
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:53:20 +1000, da Silva, Joe wrote:
>> [Attached file: HJ6A9G01.txt]
>> [Attached file: winmail.dat]
> Joe,
> Your text attachment came through just fine. There was no problem
> with decoding it and reading it at my end.
> I don't know about the other attachment. Most people here also
> wouldn't know if it worked because most of us wouldn't have any idea
> as to whatever type of crappy Windoze ware is needed for opening it
> and displaying it. We don't do Micro$oft Mail Notes here and we don't
> even know what they are for. We are very puzzled about why anyone
> would want to do them.
Joe,
I have just finished doing a little bit of research about "winmail.dat"
files being sent as attachments. "winmail.dat" files are auto-generated
by Micro$oft Lookout without the user's knowledge and then sent out as
attachments in their emails. If the email recipient retrieves his message
by using Lookout he would be clueless of the fact that the email contains
an attachment. The only thing the attachment does is to provide formatting
instructions on how to display the text body of the message when the
sender of the message uses Micro$oft Word as a composer instead of using a
text editor like all the smart people do.
At the URL below there are some instructions on how you can configure
Lookout to squash the bug that auto-generates the "winmail.dat" files
and sends them out as attachments in your emails. The attachments are
totally useless for smart people who don't download and read their emails
by using Micro$oft Lookout.
http://www.gpc.edu/~jbenson/resource/winmail.htm
Dealing with winmail.dat and unreadable email attachments
Sam Heywood
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