ohio_grad_06
Well-Known Member
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Ok, so a bit of a headscratcher here. At my day job we use Office 365 from Microsoft as a hosted exchange. I believe we are on the e3 plan at this time. Most of our users are using Office 2010 or Office 2013. Starting to get more converted to 2013 as we roll out new PC's.
Anyway here's the deal. We have some users reporting that they are sending out emails to folks using aol and gmail accounts. Ok, cool. Issue is many of them are getting Winmail.dat files when they receive the messages.
From my research, it appears that the cause of the winmail files is supposedly that you are sending from outlook and using RTF(rich text formatting). Proposed solutions are that you should send as html or plain text.
This is what I've sent to users in the past
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958012
First link describes the issue, second has a Microsoft Fix it link.
In the past, running the fix it on the second link has helped. Now however, still getting more and more saying folks they send to are getting winmail.dat files. I talked to one executive in particular who is sending to folks with gmail and saying they get them as winmail.dat. I checked all his settings in outlook 2013, by default he's set to compose messages as html, and it's set to convert the messages to html when sending in Internet Format. But they still go through as winmail.dat.
I had him test with my gmail, he sent me exactly the same 3 files he sent someone else who had the issue, I logged into gmail and showed him I got everything in PDF format. Also on my android phone, it came through fine, no winmail.dat.
The common denominator seems to be that he said many of those people are using Macs. My thinking is that what is probably happening is maybe they are using Apple Mail and maybe that's the limitiing factor. But I've seen winmail occur on other clients/platforms. Like I have seen it happen in an aol inbox for example. I even tried downloading thunderbird but it even read things properly.
I know many of the people are using gmail as I said, it seems like at least to that level things work. I'm wondering if it's when Apple mail is downloading the messages if it does not understand them and spits out winmail.dat.
Just wondering because I seem to have covered the known things, but there has to be a solution.
I'm thinking about this.
http://blog.powerbiz.net.au/office-365/fixing-the-winmail-dat-attachment-problem-in-office365/
It's supposed to be a powershell command and you can apparently disable tnef formatted message sending to certain domains. Wondering if this is a better way to tackle this. What is aggravating is that you are supposed to be able to go into contacts and go to the outlook properties of a certain person, and set the formatting for just them. In 2013 I don't see these options, but there are guides of how to do it in 2003-2007 so apparently you could do it before but maybe the option is gone? I HATE WINMAIL!!! Lol
Anyway here's the deal. We have some users reporting that they are sending out emails to folks using aol and gmail accounts. Ok, cool. Issue is many of them are getting Winmail.dat files when they receive the messages.
From my research, it appears that the cause of the winmail files is supposedly that you are sending from outlook and using RTF(rich text formatting). Proposed solutions are that you should send as html or plain text.
This is what I've sent to users in the past
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958012
First link describes the issue, second has a Microsoft Fix it link.
In the past, running the fix it on the second link has helped. Now however, still getting more and more saying folks they send to are getting winmail.dat files. I talked to one executive in particular who is sending to folks with gmail and saying they get them as winmail.dat. I checked all his settings in outlook 2013, by default he's set to compose messages as html, and it's set to convert the messages to html when sending in Internet Format. But they still go through as winmail.dat.
I had him test with my gmail, he sent me exactly the same 3 files he sent someone else who had the issue, I logged into gmail and showed him I got everything in PDF format. Also on my android phone, it came through fine, no winmail.dat.
The common denominator seems to be that he said many of those people are using Macs. My thinking is that what is probably happening is maybe they are using Apple Mail and maybe that's the limitiing factor. But I've seen winmail occur on other clients/platforms. Like I have seen it happen in an aol inbox for example. I even tried downloading thunderbird but it even read things properly.
I know many of the people are using gmail as I said, it seems like at least to that level things work. I'm wondering if it's when Apple mail is downloading the messages if it does not understand them and spits out winmail.dat.
Just wondering because I seem to have covered the known things, but there has to be a solution.
I'm thinking about this.
http://blog.powerbiz.net.au/office-365/fixing-the-winmail-dat-attachment-problem-in-office365/
It's supposed to be a powershell command and you can apparently disable tnef formatted message sending to certain domains. Wondering if this is a better way to tackle this. What is aggravating is that you are supposed to be able to go into contacts and go to the outlook properties of a certain person, and set the formatting for just them. In 2013 I don't see these options, but there are guides of how to do it in 2003-2007 so apparently you could do it before but maybe the option is gone? I HATE WINMAIL!!! Lol
