# winmail.dat

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 1, 2008, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859 "2008-01-01T02:00:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2008, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859/1 "2008-01-01T02:00:07Z")

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A friend of mine sent me three photos in a file called winmail.dat. When I double-click on it it opens in GraphicConverter X. But it only shows one photo. Somehow, yesterday, I managed to see a slideshow; but I don’t remember how I did it. How do I open all of the photos in OS X?

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**Author:** ![Number](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/number/32/242_2.png) [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2008, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859/2 "2008-01-01T08:21:17Z")

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Ask your friend to change his or her Outlook mail format to Plain Text when sending things to you. If it’s set to Rich Text then most non-Microsoft clients will receive winmail.dat.

[Cite](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061)

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**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859/3 "2008-01-01T13:01:44Z")

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You can get various utilities for handling this problem - although I agree suggesting your friend fixes it at his end is going to save him a lot of annoyed recipients. I’ve used [winmail opener](http://www.eolsoft.com/freeware/winmail_opener/), but it seems it doesn’t work for Mac. They recommend [this freeware](http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/) for Mac.

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [January 1, 2008, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/winmail-dat/431859/4 "2008-01-01T18:26:14Z")

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That worked for the first attachment. As I said, the first photo shows up in GraphicConverter X. TNEF allows me to save all three images as .jpgs. The attachment I received yesterday would not open the first image in GraphicConverter X. It says there’s an error and shows a lot of text. TNEF would not open the new file either.

But at least I know that if the first image will open in GraphicConverter X, then I can open them all in TNEF.

Thanks.