A sales rep emails a client, including pictures of the
new products his company is introducing.
A proud grandmother emails photos of her latest grandchild to all of her
friends. A graphics designer includes
pictures of his latest ad campaign in the email he forwards to his
manager. However, the recipients find
they cannot view the attachments. What
happened?
The people in our examples above can rest assured they
probably did everything right when including their attachments. The problem is with the way Outlook
communicates with other email programs.
By default, Outlook sends all its emails in a format called Rich Text. When Outlook sends an email with attachments
to another Outlook user, the recipient will see the enclosed attachment with no
problem. Other email programs, however,
may not be able to handle the Rich Text format. In these instances, attachments may come across as a file with a
.DAT extension, and may be unreadable by the recipient.
So what’s the solution?
Buying a copy of every email program all your friends and business
contacts are using, and then remembering which program to use for which group
of people, is not feasible. Don’t
worry, there’s a much easier way to fix the problem. Open up a new email.
Before you do anything else, go to the menu bar. Click on Format. At the bottom of the drop-down window that
appears, there will probably be a check mark to the left of the menu option Rich
Text. Just above that menu item is Plain
Text. If you click to the left of
that option, a window appears letting you know that formatting will be changed
if you select this option. Click Yes
to accept these changes. (If you
already have some text in your email message, don’t be surprised to see the
font style change once you’ve clicked Yes.) Then type your email message, include your attachments, and click
Send when you’re done. Those who
receive your email should be able to view your attachments with no further
problems.
Isn’t it nice to know that some solutions can be so simple?
About the author:
Danny Davids has over 25 years of experience in computer support,
network administration, and computer consulting.
tweet this!
