winmail.dat

[Scott Silva]

Jim Holland spake the following on 1/26/2006 1:15 PM:
> I guess I'll have to stay with the flow and top-post here :-)
> 
> I have long had complaints from users who are unable to open these things 
> called winmail.dat because they aren't using MS Outlook.  So I consider it 
> a plus that they now receive the message with the winmail.dat file removed 
> and a helpful notice in its place . . .
> 
> It sounds as if some correspondents are having the full message blocked, 
> and not just the attachment.  I assume that this is because they have not 
> set:
> 
> 	Deliver Cleaned Messages = yes
> 
> in MailScanner.conf
> 
> Mostly the files don't contain anything important, so can be ignored, but 
> sometimes they do have documents or image files etc which the users do 
> want to receive.  I would consider it a definite plus if there was an 
> option to extract the contents and send them along instead - similar to 
> the "Convert HTML To Text" option already available.
> 
Although this "might" be possible, a better alternative would be to send a
bounce that asks the sender to not use this vendor locked format to send mail
to the rest of the world. Not everyone uses, or has a desire to use, Outlook.
Outlook should not default to sending in this format.
Or at least have a warning that the message might not be readable to the rest
of the world and it might cause nasty e-mails and phone calls from the receivers.

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