Re: what do you do to read "winmail.dat" attachments?
* Henry Nelson <netb@xxxxxxxxxx> :
> One person keeps sending me attachments called "winmail.dat".
> Mutt shows these as: A 2 winmail.dat
> [applica/ms-tnef, quoted, 289K].
>
> What are these attachments, and is there a way to convert them
> to text to display them in Mutt?
Here's a standard reply I give to senders I get those from:
,-------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Thankyou for you email about: |
| |
| "${SUBJECT}" |
| |
| It had an attachment that was received by me as "winmail.dat". |
| |
| The attachment at your end was probably some other name. The |
| email software you are using, probably Microsoft Outlook, does |
| this to some emails without you knowing and the email in the |
| format you intended can only be opened automatically at the |
| receiving end by someone using the same program. |
| |
| I have written a program for my email software that does convert |
| it back for me, so there is no need for you to re-send it. Just |
| letting you know because some other people you send emails to may |
| be experiencing the same problem and not be able to correct it. |
| |
| I would suggest you disable this "feature" of your email |
| software. |
| |
| For more information, please read these sites: |
| |
| http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q138053/ |
| |
| and |
| |
| http://www.gpc.edu/~jbenson/resource/winmail.htm |
| |
| Thankyou. |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------'
Look into the applications 'tnef' and 'mpack' to handle it at
your end. 'Munpack' (included with mpack) will extract the
winmail.dat file, or you can just save it from within mutt.
Then convert the winmail.dat file with tnef.
Sometimes those winmail.dat files are empty/contain nothing,
sometimes they contain real attachments.
--
Troy Piggins
,-o Ubuntu v6.06 (Dapper Drake): kernel 2.6.15-25-server,
o ) postfix 2.2.10, procmail 3.22, mutt 1.5.11i,
`-o slrn 0.9.8.1/rt (score_color patch), vim 7.0