"Outlook Rich Text" and winmail.dat files

[Dale M.]

Microsoft Outlook 2007 offers a formatting setting called "Rich Text" (also known as "Outlook Rich Text"). This "Rich Text" setting attaches a winmail.dat file to outgoing emails that contains the message's formatting, and in some cases the message's attachments.


This option provides this warning "Rich Text messages can contain formatting but are only compatible with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange".

We recommend you use the more standard setting "HTML".

If you must use this "Rich Text" setting (as opposed to the more standard "HTML" setting), you can change another setting to ensure that the formatting of your emails is still compatible with other email programs.

1. In the "Tools" menu, select "Options"
2. Find the "Mail Format" tab which will give you the "Outlook Rich Text options" window (see screen shot below)
3. Under the option "When sending Outlook Rich Text messages to Internet recipients, use this format:" and choose "Convert to HTML format"

Unfortunately, when an email is sent using the “Outlook Rich Text” option (without making the adjustment suggested above), Outlook will often wrap attachments (such as Excel and Word docs) in this winmail.dat file and not include the file attachments in their native format. This means that some attachments sent using “Outlook Rich Text” formatting will not be visible in most mail programs.

Because of this, when GoLightly's mail engine receives an email that includes a winmail.dat attachment, we do not display the winmail.dat attachment (the “Outlook Rich Text” formatting file) in the Email Archive and will not forward this attachment to mailing lists. To correct this, be sure to send all emails in “HTML” (see instructions above) or “Plain Text” format rather than “Outlook Rich Text”.

Note: to turn off the stripping of Outlook winmail.dat files, see the "Database Settings" option: "email_strip_outlook_winmail_dot_dat" found under both “Email” and “Groups” admin configuration settings.