Wednesday, May 17, 2006

winmail.dat no more!!

Thanks to Hawk Wings for pointing this out.

Ever get rich text e-mails from Windows users that have a single "winmail.dat" when they're supposed to have lots of normal attachments? This is one of the things that Microsoft does to assert its dominance over stupidity. (you can't argue with that; there's no reason for handling attachments this way. It's purely because Microsoft is mean and stupid, just like all those guys in high school that liked to beat up people like Bill Gates)

Before the typical recourse would be to respond to your poor unfortunate peer and tell them to change their address book entry so that you receive "plain text" and NOT "rich text." That will get rid of the "winmail.dat"...

Well, now there's another option that lets Windows users be blissfully ignorant, which is arguably safer.

TNEF's Enough
TNEF's Enough allows Macs to read and extract files from Microsoft TNEF stream files. The files are usually received by SMTP based e-mail programs from Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook users. The SMTP based e-mail program will usually receive either a MIME attachment named "winmail.dat" or a MIME attachment with the type "application/ms-tnef."

That's right. It's an application that can open "winmail.dat" files. Open the application. Open the "winmail.dat". Extract your attachments. Voila.

Beautiful. It really is. And it's freeware.

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