Why am I receiving (or inadvertantly sending) emails with a winmail.dat attachment?
Normal email messages can be sent in one of two formats: plain text and html. Microsoft added another option with its Outlook client:”rich text”. Many new email clients now support rich text as well, but there is no requirement that they do so. If an email client that does not support rich text receives a message that was created in Outlook with rich text formatting, the message may not be readable, and the email will have an attachment called “winmail.dat”. The winmail.dat file includes the rich text formatting information for the email. Because of the incompatibilities that can be caused by sending email messages in rich text, senders should be sensitive to how Outlook is formatting their mail. Outlook can be configured to use either plain text or HTML as its default format by going to Tools -> Options -> Mail Format, and choosing either “Plain Text” or “HTML” from the Compose in this message format drop-down menu at the top of the window. If you would like to continue using “rich te
