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+---
+layout: post
+title:  On winmail.dat
+date:   2016-10-01 10:20:27 +0200
+wip:    true
+authors:
+  - ["Patrick Spek", "http://tyil.work"]
+---
+
+# winmail.dat
+This article is intended for sysadmins who run email systems and those who
+maintain the Outlook instances for their workforce. If you do not belong into
+either of these categories, the following article is probably not too useful.
+
+If you are one of the many people that suffers from a sysadmin who has yet to
+fix the `winmail.dat` issues on his network, you can kindly redirect them here
+and hope that they are kind enough to improve their services. If they do not,
+you may want to look for a better sysadmin.
+
+## What is this `winmail.dat`?
+A `winmail.dat` is a file that Outlook will attach if an Outlook user sends an
+email containing actual attachments or any kind of markup unless Outlook has
+been configured not to do so. It is a binary format that holds all the
+information to the markup used in the email and the actual attachment that the
+user was trying to send. As is typical with Microsoft, this is incompatible
+with other Microsoft products. It will only "fix" itself if the receiver is
+also using Outlook.
+
+## Why should I care?
+This means that recipients of any mail sent using such a badly configured
+Outlook instance cannot see any markup used by the sender, nor can the
+recipient see any attachment. Most people can live without the markup, but not
+being able to see the actual attachments is generally a pretty big issue.
+
+Now, there are shady tools available to try and decode these `winmail.dat`
+files, but these will not work correctly in all circumstances. Furthermore, an
+end-user should not be required to depend on a shady tool to fix the symptom of
+a misconfigured email client from another party.
+
+## How can I fix this?
+