Irregularities with Apple Mail App and Attachments when viewed in Outlook on a PC

[Mr. Anderson]

So, when I send attachments from Mail to someone using Outlook, they get two files - one I assume is icon/mac file data and one is the file itself. This has caused some confusion with individuals who are not all that savvy with computers in general and I was wondering if there were any settings or options that I could apply that would prevent this from happening and just send one file to my recipients.

Thanks,

D

 

[edesignuk]

Same thing happens when you email from Mail.app to Gmail, which I only just noticed this morning...weird.

 

[Mr. Anderson]

This has been happening for a while - but I'm finally getting annoyed with having to explain to people which file to open. You'd think that Apple would have a solution to this, because its obviously not an isolated issue.

D

 

[timnosenzo]

Does it help if you check the "Send Windows Friendly Attachments" checkbox? I kind of wonder what that does...

 

[timnosenzo]

I know that one Windows user used to complain that when I sent him .jpg files, it would send him 2 attachments. I think what it was doing was sending him the thumbnail data and the picture as 2 separate files, but I'm not 100% certain.

 

[mslifkin]

Isn't there an option in Mail.app to send "Windows friendly" attachments? Could it be that the 2nd file is a resource fork, and wouldn't be included if Windows friendly (personally I'd rather be "Windows Unfriendly") were selected? Just a thought ...

Regards,
Marc

 

[Mr. Anderson]

Does it help if you check the "Send Windows Friendly Attachments" checkbox? I kind of wonder what that does...

I'm sure that's it - I was looking for a check box in the prefs and other pulldown menus, not the damned popup file selector window....bleh...

Thanks,

D

 

[bubbamac]

I've found that if you click the 'Attach' button instead of "dragging and dropping" the file, your Mac-challenged aquaintances will have less trouble viewing the files. It's here that you'll see the "Send Windows-friendly attachments" button.

This is especially true, it seems, of images and .pdf files. The images get that second file (a data file of some sort), and sometimes .pdf files don't get recognized at all on the Windows machine if you drag and drop. I've had trouble with other file types as well.