16th September 2007

How To: Open a winmail.dat file

As most Mac users can attest, a great frustration is receiving a winmail.dat attachment, which the Mac cannot open.

First off, know that it is not really the sender’s fault – they more than likely simply attached one (or more) normal files when they sent the email, however, the problem (most of the time) is caused by Microsoft Outlook sending MIME-type attachments, or connecting to a Miscrosoft Exchange Server that is converting their MAPI-type attachments to MIME.

TNEF's EnoughBut there is good news! You don’t have to suffer frustration any longer! There is a wonderful application called TNEF’s Enough, which is a free program for opening and extracting the contents of winmail.dat files.

The key is to FIRST save the winmail.dat file to your computer somewhere (outside of your mail program), then use TNEF’s Enough to open the file’s contents. Click on each of the attached files it opens, and then click on the “Save” button to save the extracted file to your computer. At that point you can open the file with whatever application is appropriate for the file type.

Problem solved! If you find this application useful, be sure to send a couple of greenbacks to the developer, Josh Jacob.

Although this is a “how to open a winmail.dat file” post and not really a review, I give TNEF-Enough a 5-paw rating.
Rating: ★★★★★

Kitten
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