Outlook Express; PDF becomes dat file

[herrslime]

Just upgraded client to Windows XP SP2. Prior to upgrade this problem did not exist.

Client gets regular (weekly) pdf files from a customer of his as an attachment with names like 12345.pdf. Prior to upgrade they opened normally with OE. If sent directly to his secretary now they still arrive as pdf's correctly. Now they arrive at his computer as an attachment with names like att24695.dat. I have unchecked the option for allowing saving of "unsafe" items.

Client does not have his own mail server, no changes were made except the SP2 upgrade and the file arrives correctly at his secretary's SP2 computer. Computer has been virus, trojan, hijack, adware, etc, scanned. All upgrades have been applied.

I have found similar situations like this on the web but no solutions.

 

[exceeeduus75]

herrslime,

Try and associate the file with Acrobat and see if it helps.


exceeeduus75

 

[etjric]

This page may be of some help to you:

http://www.pchell.com/support/winmaildat.shtml

I have used the WMDecode utilitly listed on that page, and it worked perfectly.

 

[herrslime]

exceeeduus75; Acrobat reader does not read dat files which this is. This file has somehow been converted/corrupted as noted above.

etjric; I checked that but it only applies to files that are created by Outlook named winmail.dat.

Thanks. Anyone else run into this???

 

[smah]

Have there been any changes or updates to Antivirus software on this machine? Some AV software does some local processing on incoming mail before actually delivering to the user's inbox. Perhaps something has gone wrong with that. If you have one of the ones that does this (Norton, PC-Cillin, AVG & possibly others), try disabling the e-mail scanning component to see if the behavior changes. Does the attachment still get changed to .dat if the secretary forwards the correct one?

I assume that other than these incoming mail messages, that regular .pdf files open correctly with Acrobat Reader on this machine.

 

[BassTechnologies]

Herrslime
I feel your pain! One of my clients has a Windows 2003 Network with Exchange 2003, Norton AV Corporate and Norton for Exchange. The workstations are running Windows 2000 and Office 2000 using Outlook 2000 for email. All workstations are basically setup the same. All users email PDF's on a regular basis with no problem. However, one user starting having the PDF to DAT problem a few months ago. However it only happens when he emails a particular client. I thought it was the clients problem at first, maybe their Anti-Virus or something. However, if the user sends the email first to someone else in the office and then that user forwards email with the PDF attachment to this particular client, it comes through OK. So I thought it was a problem with the users email address--blacklisted or something. Nope! Same thing happens with a different Email Address from that users computer. I had him logon to someone elses PC as himself and send the email--same problem on a different PC in the office. So I completel removed and re-created the user from the domain and wiped out his email box from Exchange (re-booted the servers after the delete) and reinstalled Office and Outlook 2000 on the users PC and re-created his profile. Still didn't fix the problem! Now I'm pissed! I nuked the user from off the planet again AND even reformatted his hard drive and reloaded all his programs from DISK! YES, this finally worked! However, the problem came back 6 days later! I'm going to bring a slude hammer the next time I visit their office! I'm clueless!

 

[rbom]

Hi All
I just solved this problem on my side, it has to do with the length of the filename. Max. length is 50 characters before the extension ".PDF"
Anything more changes the filename into ATTxxxxx.DAT. Gosh!

Rudolf Bom

http://www.exima.ch