Re: suffix .dat

From: Paul Berkowitz (berkowit_at_spoof_silcom.com)
Date: 10/12/04 

Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:58:04 -0700

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 <bethrosengard@earthlink.net>
> 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%daiyaNOSPAM@mvps.org.INVALID,
> "Daiya Mitchell" <daiyaNOSPAM@mvps.org.INVALID> wrote:
> 
>> [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?
>> 
>

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