Issues with EML file with content-type tnef. How to resolve?

[Gregory Gadow]

My company is being audited, and we have to turn over certain archived email
files. All of our archived emails are saved as individual .EML files. All of
the emails sent by our staff have a content-type of application/ms-tnef,
because Outlook defaults to having the RTF option turned on.

Problem 1: Because of this encoding, it is impossible to use a text-based
search application to locate emails relevant to the audit. How can we search
the contents of a file encoded in the tnef format?

Problem 2: Double clicking the EML file opens it up in Microsoft's Windows
Mail application which, for some truly bizzare reason, is incapable of
displaying text using Microsoft's own encoding scheme. How can we open these
EML files so they are readable. Instructing us to turn off the default use of
RTF will do us no good, as that particular horse escaped the barn several
years ago.

Any suggestions as to solutions?

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Windows Mail is Microsoft's light duty, free email program.
Outlook is Microsoft's industrial strength corporate email program.
The two programs are quite different, designed by different teams, and
little thought was given to making the two inter-operable.

Problem 1 is better handled in an Outlook newsgroup, such as
microsoft.public.outlook.general (via NNTP), or via the web:
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...ault.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.outlook.general

For problem 2, you will need to open those files on a computer that has
Outlook installed.

 

[Gregory Gadow]

Regarding Problem 2, how do I do that exactly? If I direct Outlook to open an
EML file, all I get is a "compose email" form with the EML file set as an
attachment to go out. If I drag a file with the tnef MIME type into Outlook,
I get exactly the same problem I had when opening it with Windows Mail, with
all of the header information available and nothing else. This seemed to be
because Windows Mail was the default application for EML files, so I set
Outlook to be the default app; that again would open a "compose email" form
with the file set as an attachment. If I drag an EML file into Outlook that
does not contain the tnef MIME type, it will be rendered properly whether
Windows Mail or Outlook are the default app for EML files. In short, it would
appear that Outlook itself is unable to read files encoded with tnef.

Any further suggestions?

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Since those files started out as Outlook emails, and I don't know what process
turned them into EML files, the same advice I offered for Problem 1 applies.