This irritates me. My mom forwarded me some email attachments from Norton Antivirus. She had renewed her annual subscription.
GMail doesn’t display the attachment. It show a link “View as Text”. Which displays gibberish. I click download, open with and Outlook Express opens the attachment.
Why is GMail too retarded to recognize an Outlook document? Thats one of the most universal email document formats in the world.
Is there a setting in GMail that I need to display the attachment when I read my message? I shouldn’t have to click download, open with. That’s crazy.
What do you mean by “Outlook document”? What kind of file is it? Did you mean to write Office?
Outlook is notorious for attaching files in a nonstandard manner. Gmail should know how to see through that, but how it handles an individual file depends on what type it is.
This is just insane. A attachment auto generated by Norton’s subscription renewal gets forwarded to me today and requires a email program no longer included in Win 7? My mom’s pc is Win 7 and she’s the one that forwarded the attachment. She uses Suddenlink.net and they have a email client on their web server. She only uses suddenlink.net for her email.
…I’m not sure why you are confused. The last version of Outlook Express was released 12 years ago. Gmail didn’t even start in Beta until 2004. The links you have cited clearly state the issue is with the sender: and they need to adjust their settings so that you will be able to open the attachment/email your end. The answer to your question why can’t Gmail open an obsolete proprietary file format is because it is an obsolete proprietary file format that most certainly isn’t as you assert the most universal email document formats in the world.
A email client should recognize older file formats. Especially one as popular as Outlook Express. XP and Outlook Expres are still used by hundreds of thousands of people daily.
I’m confused because my mom doesn’t use Outlook Express. She’s on a Win 7 machine using her ISP’s web based email.
I tried setting her up under Outlook 2003. But she prefers the web interface her ISP provides.
It’s very impractical to expect a sender to change their email. Imagine this was email from customers to a business. No business is going to tell their potential customers their email format is obsolete. Businesses take customers however they come.
Thats why we have backward compatibility. Excel still reads Lotus spreadsheets created 20 years ago.
It’s not an email client’s job to understand every file format under the sun. A .eml file is an Outlook Express file. You need Outlook Express to view it, for the same reason that you need a music player to listen to a .mp3 file attachment.
What you describe in the OP (you download the file and open it in the program that understands that type of file) is exactly what should happen.
And .eml extension is an email message in Outlook. It sounds like they sent an attached email instead of just forwarding the message. The .eml extension really isn’t designed to be sent; it’s to archive the message on the computer (though it’s also used if you send a bunch of messages together).
Tell the sender to forward the actual message instead of attaching it.
It’s something weird with suddenlink.net email client. I just signed into mom’s suddenlink account and forwarded the message myself to my email. It did the same thing as before.
There’s a big “forward” button on suddenlink’s email client. But it’s causing this problem. I’m surprised it hasn’t been reported and fixed by now. Suddenlink is a big cable, DSL provider. It’s the only provider mom can use for DSL. AT&T doesn’t cover her rural area.
It’s a major PITA with Win 7 because Outlook Express doesn’t exist. I had to sign into my old XP partition just to read the attachments. Thankfully mom doesn’t forward very many emails to me.
This is very confusing and sounds like neither you or your mom know what you are really doing and you expect a “click and forget” to work seamlessly.
Outlook and Outlook Express are two completely different programs. Let’s start with that. When you are sloppy your results are prone to be sloppy.
I am trying to figure out what happened because your description is not very good. It sounds like your mom sent you an email with another email included as an attachment which itself containd an attachment.
Well, people used to do that in the AOL days but today it is just not done. You forward the email as an email not as an attachment. When I get something like that I do not even bother trying to open it. On the other hand I cannot remember when was the last time someone sent me something like that.
If she wants to send you a file tell her to save it to the desktop and then attach it to her email.
If she wants to forward an email tell her to just forward it or copy it, not to send it as an attachment.
It seems the problem here is not the software, it’s the users not really understanding what they are doing.
ETA: if sudenlink webmail has a “forward” button which attaches rather than forwards then it is suddenlink who need to be shot in the back of the head.
Are you sure it does not say “forward as attachment”?
It’s not a big deal. You can just drag and drop the .eml into Notepad to open it, or download Windows Live Mail and open it with that. They’re just plaintext. If they include attachments, WLM should be able to handle them; if not, just manually run them through a Base64 or UUDecoder.
Hi aceplace57- My name is Shannon and I am with Suddenlink. I would be happy to assist with the trouble your mother is having. Can you please have her contact me at Shannon-AT-suddenlink-DOT-com? Thanks!
Is suddenlink.com a a domain anyone can use? How do we know Shannon works there? I wouldn’t let a random person who contacted me on a message board have access to my mother’s computer.
Thats one of the most universal email document formats in the world.
My mom’s pc is Win 7 and she’s the one that forwarded the attachment. She uses