[britchenn]

Hi. I work for a small non-profit organization and some of my users send email messages with MS Word and/or Excel 2000 files attached. The recipient either receives a message with no attachment or one that can not be opened. (Usually a file such as ATT03123.dat). We use Outlook 2000 and 2003.

I've checked on such things as AV scans, encoding issues, and how they are handled on the mail server, but have been unable to track down a cause.

Any ideas what could cause this type of scenario?

Edited by britchenn, 02 June 2005 - 06:29 AM.

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Make sure Outlook isn't sending emails as Rich Text. Other programs like Outlook Express can only handle HTML or Plain Text.

You can set another format as a default by going to Tools -> Options -> Mail Format

[Guse]

Make sure Outlook isn't sending emails as Rich Text. Other programs like Outlook Express can only handle HTML or Plain Text.

You can set another format as a default by going to Tools -> Options -> Mail Format

[britchenn]

Thanks for the advice. Would this affect only the text of the email message or the files that are attached also?

[Guse]

If you send an email in Rich Text Format, Outlook will combine any attachments into a file called "Winmail.dat". Only Outlook (Full) has any clue what to do with that file.

Some programs will show you the winmail.dat attachment, while some will simply ignore the attachment altogether (thus it won't show the attachment as present).

Edited by Guse, 02 June 2005 - 01:49 PM.

[britchenn]

I will continue to check this and see if it is causing the problem. I have tried to duplicate the problem, but have not been able to. It only seems to happen sporadically, so I'm having a hard time establishing a trend.

But again, thank you for your help.

[Spank_Me]

Hi

I think that Guse is right, if some of the messages are sent from Hotmail or their Outlook is configured for Hotmail, it will change some of the settings available.

Check out this link and see if any of this helps you.

http://support.micro...kb;en-us;830302

I know that if someone just forwards an email with an attachment, the attachment is normally stripped out of the message. For a test, get someone who sent you the missing attachment to save the file to thier harddrive and send you a new email. It happens to us at work often and we use Exchange 2003 server with Outlook 2003.

[britchenn]

It seems logical that this would be the cause of this issue; the MS article did help give me more information. Thank you and Guse for your help.