Email attachments received as 'winmail.dat' attachments

[stuartmclennan]

Hi,

I just wanted to raise the below issue.

 

I’ve come up against a problem with the Hornbill system and attachments. When Managers are emailing us in with attachments they are being listed as winmail attachments that can’t be opened when you click on the attachment it looks like system tries to find a program online to open it with. This would indicate that the system is not recognising the file type that’s being sent in.

 

I can’t really understand why this would be as we’re only talking about Microsoft Office attachments like Excel and word. For some reason when our Outlook addresses are copied in on the same email we can open the attachments with no bother so it really only seems to be Hornbill the issue is with.

 

The below email is one that was sent to the Hornbill address and that I was copied in on. As you can see from the screenshot from my desktop the attachment has come through with no trouble, but if you see the screenshot below it from Hornbill it shows the email coming into the Hornbill mail box but with the attachment as a winmail attachment. This is making it very difficult to work through certain emails and is taking more time that should be needed as we need to ask the people sending to send again essentially doubling up on the emails being sent and received.

 

[Victor]

@stuartmclennan - we have been asked this on occasion and I'm afraid to say this is not a Hornbill issue. Outlook can sometimes reformat attachments to 'winmail.dat'. This is most often when the email client is sending out emails that contain Rich Text such as blog, italics, etc. Here is a like for Microsoft support website that discusses the issue, why it occurs and advice on how to fix it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/278061/email-received-from-a-sender-using-outlook-includes-a-winmail-dat-atta