What is a winmail.dat file?
The .dat extension plainly means the file is a data file. That datum could be just about anything, including text, graphics, or even video. Because macOS doesn ’ thyroxine know what type of data the file holds, it can ’ thymine put an app to open it. You could open it in a text editor program and try and determine what type of data is in the file, then manually choose which app to try and open in it by right-clicking the file in the Finder and selecting ‘ Open with ’ from the contextual menu .
For this article, though, we ’ re concerned with one specific type of .dat file, one that ’ s named winmail.dat. A winmail.dat file is one that Microsoft Outlook creates as a wrapping for data. In some cases, the electronic mail sender has set Outlook to compose messages in fat textbook format ( RTF ). And while the Mac can happily read and write RTF files, somewhere between the message being encoded by Outlook or Microsoft Exchange and it being sent, the message is appended with a winmail.dat charge. In some cases, the winmail.dat attachment may actually be a real fastening, such as a Word document or calendar invitation that has been incorrectly encoded.
How to open a winmail.dat file on your Mac
The inaugural thing to say about opening winmail.dat files is be careful. As a general dominion, you should never open any electronic mail attachment unless you ’ re sure what it is and trust the electronic mail transmitter. The fact that an attachment arrives in your inbox with the generic name ‘ winmail.dat ’ means you can ’ triiodothyronine possibly know what it is or whether the recipient intended to send it .
The moment thing to say is that, as we explained above, it could be that the attachment is nothing more than a rich textbook interpretation of the text in the body of the e-mail .
indeed, before you try and open the attachment, ask the sender what they intended to send you and whether their e-mail should have had an attachment. If the answer is no, it ’ s likely that the attachment is the rich people text version of the electronic mail. To prevent this from happening in the future, you could ask the transmitter to set Outlook to compose emails as obviously textbook or HTML. That should stop the winmail.dat file from being attached.
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The reason you shouldn ’ thyroxine clear attachments without knowing what they are is that they could be malware. If you think that Macs don ’ metric ton grow malware, precisely think how easy it would be to open an attachment that contains malicious code. For that cause, it ’ s a beneficial theme to scan your Mac for malware regularly using an anti-malware creature. CleanMyMac X has a malware scanner that compares what it finds on your Mac with a database of known Mac malware. If it finds anything fishy, it will remove it. You can set CleanMyMac X to scan your Mac automatically regularly to keep it protected, or you can initiate scans manually. CleanMyMac X besides has a handy tool that can delete attachments in Mail that you nobelium longer need and free up quad on your Mac. You can download it for free here .
How to open a winmail.dat file on your Mac in a browser
If you ’ rhenium surely that you want to open the .dat file on your Mac without contacting the transmitter, do the pursue :
- Save it to your desktop using your email client’s save attachments facility — in Apple Mail, you can right-click the attachment and choose Save.
- In a web browser, navigate to winmaildat.com
- Click Choose File and navigate to the attachment you saved.
- Click Upload and then Start.
How to open a winmail.dat file in Gmail
Google ’ s web-based Gmail customer is ace at identifying whether winmail.dat files are just rich text versions of an electronic mail message or what kind of document the attachment should be. so, if you have a Gmail account, ahead the e-mail to that and then navigate to Gmail.com in a web browser, log in, and open the forward message there.
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How to open a winmail.dat file by saving it in the right format
If the transmitter tells you they did intend to send an attachment, ask them what type of file they sent. You can then save the attachment with a meaningful name and a charge reference that can be opened by an application that opens that type of file. For exercise, if it was a Word document, save it as .doc or .docx. If it was a calendar invitation, save it as .ics .
How to open a winmail.dat file using TNEF’s Enough
TNEF ’ mho Enough is a macOS app designed to identify open winmail.dat files. Download it from the Mac App Store, open it, drag the winmail.dat attachment onto it, or right-click the attachment and choose ‘ Open with ’ and TNEF ’ s Enough. Once the application has opened it, you can export it in the adjust file format .
As you can see, there are a number of ways to open winmail.dat files on your Mac. Before you do that, however, you should make certain you know who sent it and what it contains. Our favored method is Gmail because it ’ s so dim-witted. But any of the others should besides work .