Making Outlook Attachements Compatible

If you are using Outlook and are sending attachments to other people, then in some cases they will complain they are getting a 'winmal.dat' attachment, that they can't do anything with. The 'winmail.dat' is an Outlook specific format, that requires Outlook to read it, so anyone using a non Outlook e-mail client or a web e-mail account is going to have problems. The 'winmail.dat' attachment occurs if you use Outlook's default Rich Text Format, which ironically has nothing to do with the file format of the same name (RTF). In order to solve the problem you are recommended to change Outlook's settings to send either HTML or plain text, which can be handled by other e-mail clients.

What you need to do is open Outlook's options from the 'tools' menu and then select the 'Mail Format' tab. Under this section you will see an option 'send in this message format', from the combo-box select either HTML, if you wish to be able format your text, or plain text.