winmail.dat what it is and what to do with it This guide tells you all about winmail.dat files and the WMDecode decoder Instructions for installing WMDecode are included Instructions for installing WMDecode Then, a guide to why and how to use WMDecodehow to use WMDecode And a special technique for extracting ‘lost’ attachments from Outlook Express is detailed‘lost’ attachments from Outlook Express Steve Beadle, February 2004

Installing WMDecode Installing WMDecode is easy. You need WMDecode.zip (see here)see here Open the WMDecode.zip file (use WinZip or another unzip program) Drag the file WMDecode.exe onto your desktop That’s it!

Step 1 – Mail contains ‘winmail.dat’ You receive an from a Microsoft Outlook user and it contains an attachment named winmail.dat

Step 2 – Drag ‘winmail.dat’ onto the desktop WMDecode works on files which are available to Windows You need to get winmail.dat out of your program and onto the Desktop Most programs let you drag and drop the file onto the desktop (click and hold, move and let go) You may need to shrink and drag the window to one side to see the desktop

Step 3 – Drag ‘winmail.dat’ onto the WMDecode decoder Click and hold the mouse button on the winmail.dat file Drag it over the WMDecode program (it will change colour when you are on top) Let go This will run the WMDecode software

Step 4 – Look at the results of WMDecode The text box shows which attachments have been found by WMDecode It found ‘Mappe3.xls’ Press a key to close this window

Step 5 – Done! Use the attachment(s) The attachments will be saved onto the desktop (same place as the winmail.dat file) Move them to another location if you need to Note: not all winmail.dat files contain attached files

More Information Why winmail.dat? When you receive a message from a user who has 'mistakenly' sent you a message in Microsoft Outlook RTF format, you will receive the normal message text along with an attached file named 'winmail.dat'. Strictly speaking it's not a Word rich text file and you can't use Word to read it - it is a format MicroSoft calls 'TNEF'. The winmail.dat file contains a formatted version of the message (which this program ignores) and any attached files. WMDecode will scan the selected winmail.dat file for attachments and save them individually, defaulting to the original (long) filename.

More Information Special commands for WMDecode WMDecode is capable of being used from the command line. You can build a.bat batch file to control how it does its job If you wish to use WMDecode in a script, you can add 'Q' as the second argument - this will stop WMDecode from asking for keypresses to continue: WMDecode winmail.dat Q If you wish to specify target folder for the extracted files (the default is the folder where the winmail.dat file is located), use the syntax: WMDecode filename [n|q] foldername (where [n|q] is a single character as above).

More Information But I have an Apple Macintosh! WMDecode is only for all Windows operating systems If you have an Apple computer, try

I have Outlook Express and my winmail.dat files are missing! The problem with 'lost' winmail.dat files is down to Outlook Express. Just to be perverse! Microsoft have made Express hide any winmail.dat attachments. You can extract the attachments with a little more mouse-clicking. They are still there but hidden. The following instructions tell you how to do it:

Outlook Express invisible winmail.dat Step 1 – Find the missing data In Outlook Express, open the mail Click the menu 'File','Properties‘

Outlook Express invisible winmail.dat Step 2 – Find the missing data In the dialog, click 'Details‘ In the next dialog click 'Message Source‘

Outlook Express invisible winmail.dat Step 3 – Save the data to a file Right-click 'Select All‘ Right-click ‘Copy’ Start Notepad Choose Paste from the Edit menu Choose ‘Save As’ menu Enter filename (e.g. on the desktop) WINMAIL.MIM

Outlook Express invisible winmail.dat Step 4 – Extract winmail.dat using WinZip Then open up WinZip – (other programs can decode MIME as well) - choose menu ‘File’ | ‘Open‘ Select the WINMAIL.MIM file and extract the file 'winmail.dat' (if it exists) into a folder

Outlook Express invisible winmail.dat Step 5 – Use WMDecode to get attachments Drop that file onto WMDecode.exe This will find the attachments (if any) Done!

More Notes: Files dragged onto WMDecode from another folder will cause the output to be directed to that folder, not the desktop Some files are not Winmail.dat file, they are MIME files - you can tell by opening them with Notepad and seeing the lines which look like: ----=_NextPart_ –You can decode MIME files by first renaming the file to anything.mim (change the filename extension to.mim - you may need to display full file extensions using the Options menu in Windows Explorer first). –Then open with Winzip (other programs can open mime files too).

No attachments found by WMDecode? Some winmail.dat files do not contain any attachments (e.g. Word documents etc). These are often quite small files (about 3K to 5K) which usually indicates that there are no attachments. Normally the winmail.dat file contains a formatted version of the original message, plus any file attachments. You can use Notepad to check this.

WMDecode How to download and license it a) Get a free copy from the internet. This expires after a month or two. Go to b) Pay $10 (or equivalent) and get a perpetual license. Go to If you have any queries (e.g. site licenses, source code agreement) then please contact me at the address contained in the ReadMe.txt file in WMDecode.zip