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.
