AOL users receiving attachments as winmail.dat files

[AZ BW]

My system is XP, Office 2003, latest updates, using AOL as my mail server.
Very recently, people sending me e-mail - specifically Outlook mail users -
have had their heretofore very processable attachments show up in my mail box
as winmail.dat files. The Outlook user is Office 2003, and has tried sending
all variations of plain text, rich text and HTML to see if it makes a
difference. It does not.

The Outlook user then sent the same sample set to one of my Cox.net
addresses: same result.

The only non-constant is the fact that I recently installed AOL Desktop
(10.1, I think). The previous versions were bad, but at least the attachments
were usable.

Any help anyone can provide would be much appreciated

 

[Peter Foldes]

winmail.dat belongs to Windows Mail which is Vista's email client. You might want to
check which email clients is set as default on your computer

 

[Gordon]

winmail.dat belongs to Windows Mail

No it doesn't. Winmail.dat is the file that a non-Outlook user gets from an
Outlook user sending an attachment in RTF format....

 

[neo [mvp outlook]]

Winmail.dat is usually an indication that one is sending a message in rich
text format. The AOL/Outlook 2003 is on the right track to only send
messages in plain text/html as rich text does cause winmail.dat attachments
to non-outlook clients.

Since you mentioned that plain text/html was tried, I would go one step
further and make sure that the contact record for the person one is sending
to isn't marked to receive rich text only. To check a contact record, open
it and then double click on the e-mail address. Make sure it is *not* set
to send Outlook rich text.

If the option is set to let Outlook decide, then check Tools > Options >
Mail Format > Internet Format. Make sure the middle option is set to
convert to HTML or plain text.

Other than that, I have assumed that the end user is connecting to their AOL
mailbox via IMAP.