Help a Mac user figure something out PLEASE!

ButchVA

OSNN Newbie
Joined
12 Jul 2005
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3
I'm a Mac user (OS X Tiger). There are two Windows users that I correspond with (out of literally hundreds, all over the world) who claim not to be able to see Mime attachments (usually just a simple JPEG) to my emails. Everyone else (99.9% of them) have no problem seeing them. But these two SWEAR they can't see them, and that there is nothing they can do to make them visible in a Windows environment.

Now, if it were a 50/50 split of all the Windows users I know, I might be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it's not. So can ANYONE tell me how I can tell these two guys to change some kind of setting in Windows or in their email client (I have no idea what they're using) that will allow them to see the attached JPEGs?

This is really frustrating, since I need to send stuff to them for business purposes.

Thanks!

Butch in Virginia
 
My first guess is that those users have a mail gateway blocking your attachments for some reason. I'd have them contact the system admin to check the gateway log for dropped attachments coming from your email address. I help manage a mail gateway and I see attachments blocked pretty often.

The fact that you're working from a Mac shouldn't affect whether or not they see an attachment come through. If it were a compatibility issue then I'd think they would still see the attachment, they would only have trouble viewing it. If they don't see an attachment at all then I think that's a problem on their end.

What program are you using to send email?
 
I am betting Mail.app, which fully supports the mime standard, and is perfectly compatible with the RFC standard on it.

Ive had the same problem, and it was because of Outhouse express. Switched my grandpa over to thunderbird, and all worked again.
 
Outlook and Outlook Express don't play nice with other mail applications. Especially the whole RTF deal that turns attachments into winmail.dat files for non-Outlook users. What a pain.
 
Thanks guys...

As I said, I have no idea what email client software they're using. I've had the same problem when I was using OE for Mac under OS 9, and it's remained with these guys when I switched over to Mail (the name of the email app) in OS X, so it's not a problem from my end.

See why I hate Microsoft so much? :)

B
 
are they both on the same domain? ie do their email addresses end in the same or similar @whatever part?

do they have the same problem when other people send them emails with attachments?
 
Like DUH... how many dozens, nay hundreds of times have I emailed both of these guys, and never bothered to notice that they're both on AOL. Mystery solved. When are they going to outlaw AOL? What a POS AOL is :) We've become so paranoid of viruses that we can't conduct business electronically I guess.

Thanks y'all..

B
 
The initial responses in this thread struck me as rather odd, since I've been using Outlook 2003 for ages and have never had a problem receiving attachments from other mail clients. Guess that wasn't the problem after all...
 
I don't know of Outlook users having trouble receiving attachments, but I do know that there is often trouble when non-Outlook users receive attachments from Outlook users. Say a PDF is attached from an Outlook account that uses rich text formatting... a non-Outlook user will likely receive a winmail.dat attachment instead of the PDF. There are several programs, one being WMDecode that will take the winmail.dat file and restore the original attachment. It can be a pretty inconvenient issue for non-Outlook users.
 
muzikool said:
I don't know of Outlook users having trouble receiving attachments, but I do know that there is often trouble when non-Outlook users receive attachments from Outlook users. Say a PDF is attached from an Outlook account that uses rich text formatting... a non-Outlook user will likely receive a winmail.dat attachment instead of the PDF. There are several programs, one being WMDecode that will take the winmail.dat file and restore the original attachment. It can be a pretty inconvenient issue for non-Outlook users.
Ah, winmail.dat...the problem there lies between the keyboard and the chair. :)

RTF was never meant as a general format for communication over the public internet, actually. I don't know why people use it for that purpose. Even Microsoft makes it quite clear:
If you use Outlook in the Internet Only configuration, use the plain text or HTML message format. All e-mail programs support plain text. Use HTML format if you know that the recipient's e-mail program supports HTML.

If you use Outlook in the Corporate or Workgroup configuration with Microsoft Exchange Server, use RTF to send internal messages
The real purpose of RTF is to send meeting and task requests to other Outlook users in a corportate environment. Since such messages are useless to other mail clients anyway, there's really no need why they should be able to read them at all. As the documentation clearly states, use either plain text or HTML for internet communications.

Outlook is a tool. If a person doesn't know how to use a tool, is it the fault of the person using the tool or the tool itself?
Guns don't kill people; people kill people. :D
 
Hehehe, that is the truth! It is the person's fault, but I've still seen way too many instances of winmail.dat. Perhaps the RTF option needs to be more difficult to activate! :p
 
ButchVA said:
Like DUH... how many dozens, nay hundreds of times have I emailed both of these guys, and never bothered to notice that they're both on AOL. Mystery solved. When are they going to outlaw AOL? What a POS AOL is :) We've become so paranoid of viruses that we can't conduct business electronically I guess.

Thanks y'all..

B
yay, I think they should accept standard things like zip and so on, or at least you would hope there would be an option to not strip out attachments
 

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