Unreadable attachments

[Rick]

I have friend who forwards messages from MS Outlook.
They arrive in my attachment directory with the label
"file". I am able to open and read it using an app
named Quick View Plus, but others, who use Outlook,
Outlook Express, etc. can not read them. The messages
consist of an unbroken string of letters. I don't want
to paste the complete attachment, because it includes a
number of email addresses, which probably should not be
shared. I am understand there may be a setting in
Outlook that "may" be the cause. This friend is a
highly educated, very nice person, who I am unwilling
to allow to think he has no clue, but that is the case.
Can someone, familiar with Outlook, explain the exact
setting that is responsible for the way this is sent,
so I can, gently, suggest he send in a different
format, and what that format might be? Apparently, this
copy of Outlook was set up to send in this format.

Just for the record, I can NOT open it without using
the afore said app. If a particular individual should
want to see the attachment in it's entirety, I could
send it. It's a very innocuous message.

Rick

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

what is the format he's using for email? it should be plain text or HTML,
not rich text (RTF)

 

[Rick]

what is the format he's using for email? it should be plain text or
HTML, not rich text (RTF)

That is probably the setting I am asking about. WHERE,
in Outlook, is that setting. (I don't have it as you
can probably tell.) I don't even have OE.

Rick

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

I think its at tools, options, mail format in all versions. if not, we'll
need to know the version the sender uses.

 

[Rick]

what is the format he's using for email? it should be plain text or
HTML, not rich text (RTF)

Diane, I just looked at some of the articles for
dummies in you sig, and now I don't think it's a
winmail.dat problem. At least, there's no attachment
named that. As I mentioned, some Outlook and OE users
can NOT read the attachments.

Rick

 

[Diane Poremsky {MVP}]

is the "attachment" visible in the message body as 'garbage text' ? if so it's
uuencoding. but rather than guess, copy just the message header, paste here
and remove the email addresses. we might be able to tell from just the
header. if using OE, right click on the message in the inbox list,
properties, details. message source might be good too - just the first few
lines so we can see how the attachment is coded.

These are the important lines from the message source - this example is from
some spam but should give you an example of what we need to see, with the
personal stuff removed.

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0001_01C853C0.FD358AF0"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11
Thread-Index: AchTwPQB0zKNNjrdRVerJKqZqgiyow==
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C853C0.FD358AF0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0002_01C853C0.FD358AF0"


------=_NextPart_001_0002_01C853C0.FD358AF0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit




------=_NextPart_001_0002_01C853C0.FD358AF0--

------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C853C0.FD358AF0
Content-Type: image/gif;
name="image001.gif"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <[email protected]>

R0lGODlhLQAtAID/AP////f39ywAAAAALQAtAEACcAxup8vtvxKQsFon6d02898pGkgiYoCm6sq2
7iqWcmzOsmeXeA7uPJd5CYdD2g9oPF58ygqz+XhCG9JpJGmlYrPXGlfr/Yo/VW45e7amp2tou/lW
xo/zX513z+Vt+1n/tiX2pxP4NUhy2FM4xtjIUQAAOw==


------=_NextPart_000_0001_01C853C0.FD358AF0--