Do people send you emails with attachments containing .dat extensions that you can’t open? If the recipient of a message receives a winmail.dat attachment, this means that the message received has been sent with Rich Text Format in Microsoft Exchange (for example, text in bold or italics), and that the email program used is not able read this format. For this reason, if the message contains attachments, the email provider does not know how to interpret them.
WINMAIL.DAT is a data library file, like a ZIP, but in Microsoft format. And they are usually created because the data encryption of the sender is different from that of the recipient who is trying to read it.
This often occurs when sending an HTML file that another person tries to read in RTF or in plain text. If the message does not contain attachments, at best the text will display without underlining and with strange characters in place of accents, or without the background image.
How can we solve this problem?
- The easiest solution would be to install the program that lets you read this type of encryption at: http://www.eolsoft.com/freeware/winmail_opener/
- But there are quicker and easier ways to read what you have been sent:
- Try to visualize the message in plain text, RTF or HTML format.
- Another way is to conduct a test from the origin (sender); in other words, to send the message in PLAIN TEXT. This can be easily configured in outlook or thurnderbird
In any case, this type of incident cannot be attributed to your platform; rather, it is caused by a misunderstanding between the format of the sender and recipient of an email.
