Why does Apple refuse to fix this?

[Jimmy Guphanti]

If you have ever used OSX Apple mail to communicate with someone using hotmail, outlook enterprise/outlook office web access, etc. then you know that if they try to send you an attachment, the email that opens on your mac has no attachment and always has "winmail.dat" in the body of the email. The same is true on iOS. Apple has a support page where they just say "To avoid seeing these attachments in the future, ask the sender to turn off the option in their email app to send the message in Microsoft rich text format."

I then always have to go to webmail to get the attachment. After so many iterations of OSX, why can't Apple implement a workaround for this. It is really frustrating for business users where Microsoft email clients are common.

 

[Ro_Ro_Bear]

Ahh winmail.dat. My old enemy. Still not dead yet?

Sorry to say Jimmy but this is actually a Microsoft issue rather than an Apple issue. There was a time when Microsoft would not use default standards for sending out emails. In this case, instead of using HTML formatted emails, they would use the RTF. This was the case with the older versions of Outlook on Windows (2003/2007). Thankfully both versions have passed their sell by date (as in not supported anymore).

It doesn't really help but it does give you some insight into the problem. With people hopefully transitioning away from those, you should be seeing this less and less.

More info here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/278061

 

[Shirasaki]

Ahh winmail.dat. My old enemy. Still not dead yet?

Sorry to say Jimmy but this is actually a Microsoft issue rather than an Apple issue. There was a time when Microsoft would not use default standards for sending out emails. In this case, instead of using HTML formatted emails, they would use the RTF. This was the case with the older versions of Outlook on Windows (2003/2007). Thankfully both versions have passed their sell by date (as in not supported anymore).

It doesn't really help but it does give you some insight into the problem. With people hopefully transitioning away from those, you should be seeing this less and less.

More info here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/278061

And thankfully China is the only country using Office 2003 heavily. I have already transferred to Outlook 2013, though.