From d16530d61a04435fd8cb4d4770c4ac715ac8ef0e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Patrick Spek Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2018 15:46:56 +0200 Subject: Initial commit --- _posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+) create mode 100644 _posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md (limited to '_posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md') diff --git a/_posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md b/_posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2522614 --- /dev/null +++ b/_posts/2016-10-01-on-winmail-dat.md @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +--- +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? + -- cgit v1.1