[Reggie Fowler]

My friend keeps sending me emails from his work account (via outlook) and his attachments cannot be opened up using Mail. It shows the attachment as a winmail.dat file for some reason. however, if he sends it to my AOL account it shows up fine.

why is this? and can i change a preference in Mail to stop this from happening?

[CatOne]

No, you cannot change a preference in Mail. Outlook is encapsulating it in a form that is proprietary.

You have 2 options:

1) Have your friend change his default mail sending format in Outlook. There are 3 options: Plain Text, Rich Text, and HTML text. The ONLY one that causes these TNEF attachments that lead to Winmail.dat files is Rich Text. So have him change his format to Plain Text (THE BEST), or HTML, and then the attachments will come through okay.

2) Go snag a Mac application called "TNEF's enough" that can crack open those POS Winmail.dat files and get at the contents.

RTF is a nonstandard, proprietary format. Though both Windows and Mac have RTF formats, they are different and not actually compatible.

[catlan]

You can also try the Mail.app Plug-in OMiC from http://www.restoroot.com/OMiC

[TribeLeader]

I'm getting these, too. But with a twist.

I receive a periodic email that includes a PDF attachment. In my inbox it arrives as a winmail.dat file, but in my wife's inbox, it arrives correctly as a PDF. We're both using (separate) Macs with OS X and Safari.

Also, [EDIT: I just noticed I posted this in a thread specifically related to Mail] we both access our email through separate email accounts, but from the same service (FastMail.fm).

Any ideas or solutions?