What is WINMAIL.DAT

 

The original Internet article written by Chris Vasques seems to have been withdrawn from the Internet for reasons unknown (we have our suspicions). Luckily for us, the article is still available through the web archives and is reproduced here.

 

By: Chris Vasquez

Ever wonder where WINMAIL.DAT attachments come from? It's a so-called Microsoft Exchange "feature". Since Exchange supports rich-text email (bold, italic, multiple fonts, etc.), and Internet email doesn't, any email sent from Exchange to a non-Exchange mail reader will contain an Attachment called WINMAIL.DAT. If you use Exchange, you won't see this file, and the message will retain its formatting. However, it can be confusing for those who don't use Exchange (You, I, and the majority of the Internet population), and have no use for this file.

What it does is to encode various "enhanced" message features in an entirely proprietary way which only Microsoft programs can make any sense of. HTML e-mail, for all its problems, is at least a nonproprietary format that's supported by many programs; not so for this winmail.dat abomination.

If you get attachments like this from anybody, tell them to cut it out and use standards-compliant methods if they need to send you anything other than plain text. This would preferably involve uninstalling everything from Microsoft and getting more reasonable software, but if they're too unreasonable to do this, there is a way to turn off winmail.dat attachments.

In MS Outlook and Outlook Express:
On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Mail Format (or "Send") tab.
Under the Send tab is the message format list, select Plain Text or HTML (NOT Rich Text Format), and then click OK.

 

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