suffix .dat

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Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted file
in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open them when
I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat file?
 
Hi Skottis,

It could be because of the Mac email client the sender is using. If it's
Apple's Mail, he may not have chosen to "send Windows friendly attachments".
Or it's possible that he didn't choose the correct encoding in another
client (AppleDouble or MIME/Base 64 for Windows).

Do you know what the sender is using?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>


[cross-posting Mac/windows question]

Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted file
in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open them when
I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat file?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
No, that's not why.

The only .dat files I've seen are winmail.dat attachments in email.

These are sent from Outlook Windows whenever the sender sends mail in RTF
format. RTF is a format for styled, formatted text, something the simple
HTML that Entourage can produce, but it' not HTML. Entourage can't read RTF,
so it displays the "alternative" plain text. The RTF part of the message is
seen as a winmail.dat attachment. 90% of the time, the winmail.dat
attachment is nothing but the same text in RTF wrapping. Unfortunately, if
the sender also sent a real attachment of any type, it gets wrapped in the
same winmail.dat attachment. S in order to check whether there's any real
attachment in there, you have to find a way of opening it.

That way is via a free utility called "TNEF's Enough", available at
http://versiontracker.com. It recently came out in a new OS X version.

RTF was the default format in Outlook 95, 97, 2000 and 2002 (XP). So you can
get a lot of these. If you know for a fact there's no real attachment, just
ignore it. Fortunately, the most recent Outlook 2003 now has HTML as
default. Ask all your regular correspondents who use Outlook to send you
messages in either plain text or HTML, not RTF. They can set your contact to
always get plain text, which might be a good idea pre-2003.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

From: Beth Rosengard <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 15:24:40 -0700
Subject: Re: suffix .dat

Hi Skottis,

It could be because of the Mac email client the sender is using. If it's
Apple's Mail, he may not have chosen to "send Windows friendly attachments".
Or it's possible that he didn't choose the correct encoding in another
client (AppleDouble or MIME/Base 64 for Windows).

Do you know what the sender is using?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>


[cross-posting Mac/windows question]

Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted
file
in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open them
when
I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat file?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hi Paul,

Either you or I misread Skottis and I think it's you :-). If I read him
correctly, he is on a Windows machine receiving .dat files (not winmail.dat
files) from a Mac sender, not the other way around. This has come up before
and I think it was you, actually, who gave me the explanation that I passed
on to Skottis. If he were a Mac user receiving a winmail.dat file, he would
never have been able to just change the extension to make the file
Word-friendly. In that case, he *would* have needed TNEF's Enough.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>



No, that's not why.

The only .dat files I've seen are winmail.dat attachments in email.

These are sent from Outlook Windows whenever the sender sends mail in RTF
format. RTF is a format for styled, formatted text, something the simple
HTML that Entourage can produce, but it' not HTML. Entourage can't read RTF,
so it displays the "alternative" plain text. The RTF part of the message is
seen as a winmail.dat attachment. 90% of the time, the winmail.dat
attachment is nothing but the same text in RTF wrapping. Unfortunately, if
the sender also sent a real attachment of any type, it gets wrapped in the
same winmail.dat attachment. S in order to check whether there's any real
attachment in there, you have to find a way of opening it.

That way is via a free utility called "TNEF's Enough", available at
http://versiontracker.com. It recently came out in a new OS X version.

RTF was the default format in Outlook 95, 97, 2000 and 2002 (XP). So you can
get a lot of these. If you know for a fact there's no real attachment, just
ignore it. Fortunately, the most recent Outlook 2003 now has HTML as
default. Ask all your regular correspondents who use Outlook to send you
messages in either plain text or HTML, not RTF. They can set your contact to
always get plain text, which might be a good idea pre-2003.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

From: Beth Rosengard <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 15:24:40 -0700
Subject: Re: suffix .dat

Hi Skottis,

It could be because of the Mac email client the sender is using. If it's
Apple's Mail, he may not have chosen to "send Windows friendly attachments".
Or it's possible that he didn't choose the correct encoding in another
client (AppleDouble or MIME/Base 64 for Windows).

Do you know what the sender is using?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>


[cross-posting Mac/windows question]

On 10/11/04 2:09 AM, "Skottis" wrote:

Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted
file in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open
them when I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat
file?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I didn't catch that, so it must be my mistake. It wasn't I who told you
about .dat files coming from Apple's Mail when sending without "Windows
friendly attachments", because I didn't know about it. I'm glad to learn
about it now.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

From: Beth Rosengard <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 19:59:42 -0700
Subject: Re: suffix .dat

Hi Paul,

Either you or I misread Skottis and I think it's you :-). If I read him
correctly, he is on a Windows machine receiving .dat files (not winmail.dat
files) from a Mac sender, not the other way around. This has come up before
and I think it was you, actually, who gave me the explanation that I passed
on to Skottis. If he were a Mac user receiving a winmail.dat file, he would
never have been able to just change the extension to make the file
Word-friendly. In that case, he *would* have needed TNEF's Enough.

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>



No, that's not why.

The only .dat files I've seen are winmail.dat attachments in email.

These are sent from Outlook Windows whenever the sender sends mail in RTF
format. RTF is a format for styled, formatted text, something the simple
HTML that Entourage can produce, but it' not HTML. Entourage can't read RTF,
so it displays the "alternative" plain text. The RTF part of the message is
seen as a winmail.dat attachment. 90% of the time, the winmail.dat
attachment is nothing but the same text in RTF wrapping. Unfortunately, if
the sender also sent a real attachment of any type, it gets wrapped in the
same winmail.dat attachment. S in order to check whether there's any real
attachment in there, you have to find a way of opening it.

That way is via a free utility called "TNEF's Enough", available at
http://versiontracker.com. It recently came out in a new OS X version.

RTF was the default format in Outlook 95, 97, 2000 and 2002 (XP). So you can
get a lot of these. If you know for a fact there's no real attachment, just
ignore it. Fortunately, the most recent Outlook 2003 now has HTML as
default. Ask all your regular correspondents who use Outlook to send you
messages in either plain text or HTML, not RTF. They can set your contact to
always get plain text, which might be a good idea pre-2003.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

From: Beth Rosengard <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement,microsoft.public.mac.office.word
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 15:24:40 -0700
Subject: Re: suffix .dat

Hi Skottis,

It could be because of the Mac email client the sender is using. If it's
Apple's Mail, he may not have chosen to "send Windows friendly attachments".
Or it's possible that he didn't choose the correct encoding in another
client (AppleDouble or MIME/Base 64 for Windows).

Do you know what the sender is using?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>


On 10/11/04 11:42 AM, in article BD902218.1F47%[email protected],

[cross-posting Mac/windows question]

On 10/11/04 2:09 AM, "Skottis" wrote:

Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted
file in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open
them when I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat
file?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hello,
Yes I´m on a PC, the sender is using Outlook on a Mac and I suspected that
it was the encoding, the only answer I got was that he was sending mail all
the time to PC users and never had a problem before it was only when sending
to my user in question - Hmm, Im sure that was the reason because I have
heard no more about it. I´m a she bye the way. Thank you anyway for your
answers!

"Beth Rosengard" skrev:
Hi Skottis,

It could be because of the Mac email client the sender is using. If it's
Apple's Mail, he may not have chosen to "send Windows friendly attachments".
Or it's possible that he didn't choose the correct encoding in another
client (AppleDouble or MIME/Base 64 for Windows).

Do you know what the sender is using?

--
***Please always reply to the newsgroup!***

Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP

Mac Word FAQ: <http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/index.htm>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org>


[cross-posting Mac/windows question]

Sometimes Word files have the suffix .dat when I get them as an inserted file
in Outlook, the file is always sent from a Mac. Howcome? I can open them when
I change the suffix or tell to use Word, but why is it a .dat file?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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