What is the deal with those winmail. dat files? I get them in my email all the time, and nothing seems to be able to open them.

My answer was about how to extract file contents when a winmail.dat file arrives in your in-box. You are correct, sending the mail as plain text in the first place solves the problems.

We keep getting e-mail attachments in winmail.dat files, and can't open them. What's going on? Is there a utility that can extract the attachments from these?

There is software that will open such files — just search for Winmail.dat decoder. And you can open them in Microsoft Word. But you’ll see only a bunch of gibberish.

Many times when receiving mail attachments with the new Exchange-enabled Microsoft Entourage v.X from Windows users, you will get a winmail.dat file that is inaccessible under Mac OS X. Alan Sill ...

Q. I received e-mail from a relative that says it is in a winmail.dat file. When I try to open the file, I get a message that says something like: "You are attempting to open a dat file. They are ...