How to read Winmail.dat attachments

Emails sent from Microsoft Outlook may come with a winmail.dat attachment. The Maths Windows machines have a small program installed called Winmail Reader to decode these attachments. It can be found in the "Maths Faculty Extra Programs" folder under Start -> All Programs.

Save the winmail.dat attachment from your email to somewhere (not in the root of N: as anyone can read your files here, n:\private will be fine), open Winmail Reader and press the 'open winmail.dat' button, locate the file and it will show you the contents of the attachment. You can then save the files or open then from within the reader program.

Now it is possible to set this up so that Winmail Reader will automatically open when you click on such an attachment from within Thunderbird.

Double click on the attachment, you will be asked what you want to do with it. Click the browse button and type in the following into the box alongside 'File name:'

\\mathsdom\netlogon\maths_programs_menu\winmail\WinmailReader.exe

Click the open button.

Now tick the box next to the text 'Do this automatically for files like this from now on'. Press OK. The reader will now open automatically for all future clicking on .dat attachments.