Winmail.dat Problem

[JONLIM]

Client is receiving all emails i send him with attachments (including meeting invites) as winmail.dat

My Setup:

Outlook 2016.   Godaddy Office 365.

His Setup:

Outlook Mac (Ipad and Macbook)

Client receives email body.   Just not attachments.

Cheers

Jon

[Kaitosai]

Hi,
Most likely your client is using a older version of outlook for mac. This article explains how your client can view your attachments without upgrading their outlook.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201773

Hopefully this helps!

[RoCass]

I'm having the same problem but it's not the iPhone causing the issue. If I view the same attachment in the GoDaddy mobile mail view (Tools/Mobile Mail) the Excel file shows up as a winmail.dat file as well. The problem is with GoDaddy not the mobile device.

[Alfabeach]

The problem is with Microsoft, and it is a known problem for years. You need to do some research.

[tmsun]

What research are you referring to?  I am having the same issue with my Godaddy web mail:  my client sends me an email to my Godaddy web mail email address WITH an Excel attachment.  When I receive it, there is an additional winmail.dat file attached to the email along with the Excel file attached.  However, when I go to open the Excel attachment, my email client will only recognize the Excel attachment as a winmail.dat file for some reason--and the file becomes unreadable when opened.  This is a Godaddy web mail issue--doesn't seem like a Microsoft issue:  because when I have the same email from my client sent to my Gmail personal email account, I have NO issue opening up the Excel attachment and there is NO additional winmail.dat file attached.  Should I cancel my Godaddy email account service and open up an email service with Google gmail?

[kimblee5]

Myself and colleague are having the same issue with our Godaddy Workspace email with PDF files. The attachment shows the original pdf and winmail.dat file and neither can be opened.

[kimblee5]

When I try to open the file, it shows opening download.php and this is the jibberish:

[signmeup]

I am having the same problem - receiving Winmail.dat and not able to open attachments or receive them.

What can I do ?

[mpwatson]

It's May  2018 and they still haven't solved the problem. I plan to migrate back to a pop server if they cant fix next week.

[DebRun]

I also have a similar problem.

Online I see 2 attachments: winmail.dat, 53 k and Proposed Agenda-Task Force Meeting.doc, 1 k.

When I download them the first is winmail.dat, 54 KB and the second is download.php, 25 KB.

When I rename download.php to download.doc it is the doc file that was attached.

In Eudora I see only winmail.dat.

I have received winmail.dat files instead of doc files several times from this correspondent. Usually, the second time she sends the file I get it.

[Rayc1 · Accepted solution]

"The solution: If you’ve been experiencing this problem and you’ve researched it you have undoubtedly come across various articles and suggestions that you need to go through a number of PowerShell back-flips in order to correct it, however you don’t need to do that; you can fix this directly from the Office 365 Admin portal and here’s how you do it…

1. Login to your Office 365 Portal (portal.office.com) using your Admin credentials.
2. Click the Admin icon.
3. Flip down the Admin sub-menu from the left-hand menu, and click Exchange. This will take you to your hosted Exchange admin page.
4. Click Mail Flow from the left hand menu.
5. Click Remote Domains from the top menu line. This will allow you to configure a specific set of rules for the offending recipient domains.
6. Click the Plus icon above the name field. This brings up a separate page that allows you to start the process of configuring the rules for the recipient domain(s).
7. Give the configuration a suitable name for the rule you’re adding.
8. Add the fully-qualified domain name for the recipient that’s having the problem with the winmail.dat attachments. As far as I can tell, the configuration should support wildcards
9. About two-thirds of the way down the page, you’ll find the “use rich text” setting – it will default to “Follow user settings”. Change this to “Never”.
10. I also suggest you can change the default MIME encodings to Unicode (UTF-8) because in my experience it seems to transition through foreign mail servers better
11. Hit the Save button.

Of course, you’ll need to add each domain individually if you have lots of recipients with the winmail.dat problem. The obvious fix is to use the “default” rule to set “use rich text” to “Never” – although in our case our Exchange instance already had this setting, but the problem persisted, go figure…"

[jinqihrb]

So this problem is still happening, what can we do to solve it?

[SteveR1]

I have the same problem with PDF's showing up as winmail files.  I own a small business and it is embarrassing to ask customers to cc attachments to my wife's gmail account.  She is able to open the pdf's through gmail but they cannot be opened when received through godaddy.

Does anyone from GoDaddy monitor these questions?  I think we would all appreciate an answer.

[AEB_Consult]

Steve, I am having the same issues.  It is thankfully not with clients but with colleagues who use gmail and att.net accounts.  However, I can send Word docs to my personal gmail and they are attached.

[WRH]

This problem doesn't originate on the side of the email recipient. The problem originates on the email sender side. It is settings configuration issue with email senders using Outlook. What is perplexing is that you very well might be able to receive email normally from some Outlook users, and not others. I have only encountered this with email that I recieve from one  person using older legacy version of Outlook. If the email sender cant or wont troubleshoot their side, then the email recipient can download free utility from CNET that will allow the email recipient to open / read / download / save the winmail.dat attachment files. It is quick and free and easy to use.  

[kdefilip]

I disagree!  Any mail from any send, when opened in my Workspace email using any browser, no matter whether it is a pdf, word doc, notepad doc, etc, no matter the sender, there are two files in the attachment area, winmail.dat and the file attached by the sender.  However, when you attempt to open the attachment, it tries to open as a winmail.dat file, rendering the attachment unreadable and un-openable.