On 7 Feb 99, at 15:23, David Hurst wrote:

> Just what is this winmail.dat file that sometimes is at the
> bottom of incoming emails in netscape 4.5  ??
> And is it a readable file..??  As best i can tell, it is only
> there when there has been a forwarding action to me...???

  Starting with "Exchange", included with Windows 95, Microsoft has
released a stream of mail clients which support various forms of "rich
text" -- colours, fonts, bells and whistles.
  Recognizing -- sort of -- that most of the world doesn't *use* any
one of those mail clients, Microsoft packages up rich text mail as a
vanilla text email message, with the rich text version in an
attachment.  The rich text attachment will be decoded IF the recipient
uses the same mail client as the sender.  [I haven't investigated
whether Exchange, Windows Messaging, Outlook, Outlook Express, and
Internet Mail will properly display each others rich text attachments.]

  Each of these Microsoft clients provides a way to turn off sending of
such attachments -- but details vary.  Exchange was particularly bad in
this regard, because the option that was easy to find didn't turn it
OFF, it just switched it to an alternate format....


David G

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