Filed under: Enterprise, Software, Switchers, Odds and ends, Snow Leopard
Tired of those winmail.dat files? Letter Opener 3 can help
If there's anything that drives Mac users into a frenzy, it's those winmail.dat files that can show up in Apple Mail when they receive email from colleagues or friends using Microsoft Outlook. Winmail.dat files can either files that are attached to the message, or they can contain information such as embedded documents, meeting requests, address card info, notes, or forwarded messages sent as attachments. Regardless of the content, they're just plain annoying on the Mac.restoroot, a Mac development firm out of Millstatt, Austria, has the solution for you. Letter Opener 3 (€19.99 or €9.99 upgrade for version 2.0 owners) is an Apple Mail plugin that can ease winmail.dat frustrations. Letter Opener has been recently updated for compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and it can:
- Convert Outlook schedules, appointments, and tasks to iCal
- Convert Outlook contacts to Address Book
- Open nested messages in winmail.dat files
- Translate notes from Outlook
- Let you read delivery status and read receipt messages
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rick Abraham said 12:14PM on 9-08-2009
I haven't had a chance to try it since I upgraded to Snow Leopard but I am hoping the free TNEF's Enough app still works to decode winmail.dat files. It is available here. http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/ The interface is clunky but it did the job the few times I needed it.
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Gerard Byrne said 11:50AM on 9-08-2009
Been working for years. Free!
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/TNEFs-Enough.shtml or better still direct @ http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/
Funnily enough, I never get these types of attachments any more.
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Michael Kussmaul said 12:02PM on 9-08-2009
But "Letter Opener" is nicely integrated with Mail - winmail.dat will directly be shown inside the mail message.
Your suggestions are all quite dated (2003/2004) and not automatic - you need to download the winmail.dat and let it process manually...
Gerard Byrne said 12:23PM on 9-08-2009
But the headline 'feature' was winmail.dat and TNEF just works (for free). Snow Leopard takes care of the Exchange integration if you need it (free) meaning you don't need Outlook any more :-)
I have used Mozilla Thunderbird (on the PC!) as a once off converter for Outlook when moving a number of friends to Mac/Mail.app. Thunderbird will import Outlook .pst files and save as MBOX (which is Mac Mail native import!).
Can't remember the last time I got a WINMAIL.DAT file (was that an Outlook Express botch). Anyway, like Randy says (below) - asking the sender to re-send as a 'normal' attachment (MIME encoded) seems to do the trick.
Can't see the reason to purchase this product (key feature) unless you are moving data over and back regularly between Outlook and Mail.app (why?) as opposed to a once off migration.
LD said 11:52AM on 9-08-2009
Lifehacker had a good article about how much Snow Leopard actually cost people.
http://lifehacker.com/5354505/what-was-your-total-snow-leopard-upgrade-cost
This is another example. If you wanted your 2.0 version to work in SL you had to pony up another €9.99.
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Gerard Byrne said 12:32PM on 9-08-2009
The article refers to the extra $40 for the SL compatible version of Parallels. Parallels is great but their patches are chargeable upgrades (hence why I use VMWare these days).
mabhatter said 3:13PM on 9-08-2009
To be fair it looks like Parallels 4.0 came out at the Beginning of 2009 maybe late 2008... why would they support old software 9 months later when they fixed it already?
Randy said 12:04PM on 9-08-2009
I used get these back in the day. I havent' received any in recent memory.
Also, I just respond back to the sender that I can't read the message and to re-send in "normal" format. Usually does the trick.
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Dripps said 12:14PM on 9-08-2009
I was all set to try/buy this until I saw what it cost! For $30 I will put up with inconvenience and deal it.
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Jesse said 1:23PM on 9-08-2009
Not a solution for everybody, but Gmail's web client seems to handle winmail.dat files just fine. Whenever one shows up in Apple Mail, I just fire up gmail.com and download the attachment there.
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mike said 1:51PM on 9-08-2009
dont' get it - why in the world do iCal, Address Book, and Mail have this problem in the first place - if Google can import from Outlook & export to iCal, and if programs like in this article can make the translation seamless - this should be integrated in Snow Leopard. Isn't this the very nature of the recent OS upgrade?!
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Julian Field said 3:01PM on 9-08-2009
Systems such as MailScanner, deployed on one gateway machine for your entire company, will replace all the winmail.dat attachments with "real" attachments automatically and silently, so no-one in the company ever has to deal with them.
All your internal Windows boxes can be simply configured (in Outlook or Exchange as appropriate) to never generate winmail.dat files, so the only ones left are those coming in from outside.
MailScanner handles all of those for you without any installation on individual Macs/PCs or any licensing costs of any sort. It's all free!
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Scott said 5:24PM on 9-08-2009
I still get these from a few select customers at the day job and for the price (free) TextWrangler does a bang up job with opening those pesky buggers and helps me identify all kinds of other attachments that come across without file extensions.
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Joe said 6:11PM on 9-08-2009
Anyone know of a way to open MS Outlook .msg files?
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George K. said 12:54PM on 9-09-2009
@Dripps: I'm sure a lot of people have the same reaction as you. This plug-in is a one trick pony that I need maybe 4x a year. For the sake of convenience I would have purchased it a long time ago but US$29.99 is completely out of line with its value. The developers goofed on the pricing.
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NerdyLibery said 10:56AM on 9-10-2009
Frankly, in the interest of compatibility, shouldn't either Apple or MS or both make such a capability available free of charge as part of their software? I don't quite understand the reasoning against it. In any case, it costs too much.
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Rick said 1:04PM on 9-11-2009
I just tried the freebie mentioned in post #1 and it works just fine. I might pay $10US for LO3, but that's about it.
YMMV
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