Weird/Stupid Outlook problem

[red-beard]

It appears that when certain forms of Outlook generate a rich text e-mail, they attach a winmail.dat file to the e-mail. I can read these e-mails properly with an e-mail program that ignore this file. But when these e-mails are read by Outlook, it strips a large section of the e-mail. The e-mail looks like someone replyed, but didn't type anything.

I've intercepted the e-mails at the server, and they are fine. It is outlook that is doing this. I'm using Outlook 2003 and this is occuring on 2 different machines.

If I forward the saved e-mail, the same thing happens. If I strip the winmail.dat file as I forward it, the e-mail comes in just fine.

[Eric Coffey]

No expert, but you might try playing with the following settings:

Go to options, then the "mail format" tab.

Change "compose message" format to HTML (or if it already is, try changing to rich-text).

Then check (or uncheck) the "use MS Word to read rich-text" box below it.

Also, if you use stationary, try disabling it (also on the mail format tab).

[svandamme]

actually, there's a setting on Exchange for this...

It's in the Internet Mail Connector, specify to always send rich text along

[red-beard]

It is on incoming message, not outgoing messages, so changes those settings won't do anything.

It looks like there is a bug when a rich text Outlook 2007 goes to an Outlook 2003 client. I've found a few references.

[red-beard]

Is there a way to strip this on the receiving end, or is the fix only at the sending end? I'm the receiver, not the sender.

[Eric Coffey]

Ah, disregard then, and good luck. Don't think there is anything you can do on the receiving end, unless you have backdoor server access (again, not positive, no expert, blah, blah).