[hawiken]

Aloha,
I'm working in an office with one other guy; we both have Dell laptops running XP Pro, with Office XP. I didn't care too much for the Dell, so I bought an iBook 800, running OS 10.2.6. I use Mail.app on the Mac, and we both use Outlook on the Dells.
If he sends me an e-mail with any MS attachment (Word, Excel, etc.), the attachment shows up on my Mac, in Mail.app as a "winmail.dat" file. When I try to open it, the application 'IM PlugIn Converter' opens, and I get a dialogue box with the message,
"Chinese Input Method Plug-in Convertor
The action could not be completed because it can't convert file with Chinese file name."
Now, bear with me...
If I receive the e-mail with attachment on my Dell, and then forward it to myself ( without opening the file, or changing it in any way- just forwarding the e-mail) and receive it on the Mac, no problem; the attachment shows up as a Word, or Excel file, and I can open it with Office X.
So, I'm thinking that there's something going on with Outlook on his Dell. Either that, or his outgoing mail server is doing something weird, but Road Runner swears that that's not the case. (We're using 2 different ISP's; he's using Road Runner, and I'm using a subsidiary of Road Runner called Wave- they have different support personnel, different mail servers, etc, but the payments for both go to the same place. Don't ask me....)
I realize that this is a Mac forum, but I'm wondering if someone here, who is lots smarter than I am (nearly all of you), can tell me what might be going on? And, after all, there is a Mac involved...
I have looked at his prefs under Outlook>Tools>Options>Security, because I thought that he might have turned on encryption, but that's not the case; and that's the limit of my knowledge of Outlook.
Thanks for any help,
Ken

[voyageur]

Aren't you lucky to be in beautiful Hawaii!

The evil winmail.dat problem plagued us too.

If I remember rightly, what we found was that a fresh MS Office document emailed from Windows to Mac did NOT transform into a winmail.dat attachment, but a MS Office document that had been REVISED and SAVED before it was sent did.

I think, if I remember correctly, it had something to do with the incremental saves that Office does. I think the way we got around it was to avoid using Versions and do a Save As... and save to a new document before emailing. We found it was not the fault of the mail server. It's been a while, so I don't know for sure. Other people have had this problem, too, so maybe they will jump in.

[Raining Down in Texas]

Originally posted by hawiken:
Aloha,
I'm working in an office with one other guy; we both have Dell laptops running XP Pro, with Office XP. I didn't care too much for the Dell, so I bought an iBook 800, running OS 10.2.6. I use Mail.app on the Mac, and we both use Outlook on the Dells.
If he sends me an e-mail with any MS attachment (Word, Excel, etc.), the attachment shows up on my Mac, in Mail.app as a "winmail.dat" file. When I try to open it, the application 'IM PlugIn Converter' opens, and I get a dialogue box with the message,
"Chinese Input Method Plug-in Convertor
The action could not be completed because it can't convert file with Chinese file name."
Now, bear with me...
If I receive the e-mail with attachment on my Dell, and then forward it to myself ( without opening the file, or changing it in any way- just forwarding the e-mail) and receive it on the Mac, no problem; the attachment shows up as a Word, or Excel file, and I can open it with Office X.
So, I'm thinking that there's something going on with Outlook on his Dell. Either that, or his outgoing mail server is doing something weird, but Road Runner swears that that's not the case. (We're using 2 different ISP's; he's using Road Runner, and I'm using a subsidiary of Road Runner called Wave- they have different support personnel, different mail servers, etc, but the payments for both go to the same place. Don't ask me....)
I realize that this is a Mac forum, but I'm wondering if someone here, who is lots smarter than I am (nearly all of you), can tell me what might be going on? And, after all, there is a Mac involved...
I have looked at his prefs under Outlook>Tools>Options>Security, because I thought that he might have turned on encryption, but that's not the case; and that's the limit of my knowledge of Outlook.
Thanks for any help,
Ken

Look on Versiontracker for a program called TNEF's Enough. It can decode the winmail.dat files, and it comes with a file that explains what causes them.

To summarize it, if the Outlook user has you marked as able to receive rich text in their address book, Outlook uses it's own proprietary encoding scheme for both the message and any attachments. If a non-Outlook user receives the message, they get the text and a winmail.dat file that contains the message formatting and attachments. Have your friend disable rich text for you in his address book and you should get regular attachments.

[hawiken]

Many thanks to you both- I'll see how TNEF works tomorrow, and I'll disable rich text in his address book- it's after hours here, and the buddy's gone.
Thanks,
Ken

[hawiken]

And there's more info here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;278061

TNEF's enough works great, by the way...
Again, thanks,
Ken

[voyageur]

Originally posted by Raining Down in Texas:
Look on Versiontracker for a program called TNEF's Enough. It can decode the winmail.dat files, and it comes with a file that explains what causes them.

Texas: Thanks for this tip! This program looks great.