Word attachments won't open

[Geoff Gilbert]

A client has been sending me documents created in Word for
Windows, 2000 version. I use a dialup connection and the
attachments appear on the ISP mail program with the .doc
extension, but when I download them into Entourage, they
have a ms-tnef extension. These documents will not open.
If I open the attachments from the ISP mail program, I get
the .doc extension, but when I open the document, it has
page breaks after every paragraph and a multitude of
strange characters. Best I can tell this is a file
compatability probelm. Whatever it is, does anyone know
how what's going on and how I can fix it?

 

[Barry Wainwright]

A client has been sending me documents created in Word for
Windows, 2000 version. I use a dialup connection and the
attachments appear on the ISP mail program with the .doc
extension, but when I download them into Entourage, they
have a ms-tnef extension. These documents will not open.
If I open the attachments from the ISP mail program, I get
the .doc extension, but when I open the document, it has
page breaks after every paragraph and a multitude of
strange characters. Best I can tell this is a file
compatability probelm. Whatever it is, does anyone know
how what's going on and how I can fix it?

Winmail.dat and/or application/ms-tnef files are sent by Windows users of
Outlook or Exchange who have their mail clients set up to use ŒRTF¹ instead
of plain text or HTML.

Usually they only contain a styled text version of the message you have just
read in plain text, but they can contain encoded attachments that you can¹t
usually get to.

Fortunately, there is an excellent little application that lets you read
these files and extract the attachments, called ³TNEF¹s Enough², by Josh
Jacob. Here¹s a link that should let you find it on VersionTracker:

<http://www.versiontracker.com/mp/new_search.m?productDB=mac&mode=Quick&OS_F
ilter=MacOSX&search=tnef& ;x=14&y=8

Better still, contact you correspondent and ask them to reset their mail
client prefs to use plain text, or at worst, HTML.