Mac Office X attachment prob to WinXP Office

[Eric Francis]

When I attach a Word (Mac Office OS X) doc to an email going to a
WinXP computer it seems like they get two attachments. I have heard of
the Data Fork and Resource Fork problem before but only when using Mac
OS 9.x.

Does this still plague the transfer process to a PC?

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Yes, it does, but only depending on how you are encoding the attachment.
Modern e-mail applications like Microsoft Entourage allow you to choose the
encoding method. The default encoding, AppleDouble, does send both forks,
which are not identified as one file on Windows machines, which explains the
problem you see. However, it's easy to switch to the "Windows
(MIME/Base64)" encoding, which only sends the data fork thus bypassing the
problem.

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

When I attach a Word (Mac Office OS X) doc to an email going to a
WinXP computer it seems like they get two attachments. I have heard of
the Data Fork and Resource Fork problem before but only when using Mac
OS 9.x.

Does this still plague the transfer process to a PC

No. There's no problem and never was one. Windows doesn't need the resource
fork file, so it can just be ignored there. That's hardly a major problem.
To avoid the blank stares at their end, you can choose to send attachments
using MIME/base64 encoding instead of the default Apple Double coding when
sending messages fro Entourage to a Windows recipient. In the attachments
pane click the long "Encode" button at the bottom and change the setting to
MIME/base64. Or if you have far more Windows correspondents than Mac, change
the default to MIME/base64 in Mail & News Preferences/Compose, and do the
per-message setting for Mac recipients - where you really do not it.

What you should do absolutely is check the Compose/Encoding preference for
including file extensions. That will ensure that Windows recipients will
see the correct icon and can double-click to open the attachment, even if it
is sent with Apple Double encoding.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP Entourage
Entourage FAQ Page: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/toc.html

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