Thunderbird winmail dat linux

Opening winmail.dat attachments

After saving an attachment in a Thunderbird mail message to my Ubuntu 16.04 files, I was informed that a winmail.dat file can’t be opened. I am not tech-savvy. Is there an easy solution?

I would query your system what type of file it is, ie. file /path/winmail.dat which should tell you what type of file it is (not from it’s name, but the file’s contents; sorry it’s a command as it’s where I’d do it)

I am not at all familiar with how the terminal works. I don’t know how to query the system about the file. I tried «file /path/winmail.dat» and got «no such file or directory». I also tried Graham’s suggestion of winmaildat.com and got the file there as a «docx», but was still unable to open it. I am apparently misunderstanding the directions and options I am given. I appreciate your taking time for me.

3 Answers 3

Microsoft Outlook can include attachments in email using a proprietary format. Email clients that do not support the Outlook format see that attachment as a file winmail.dat . You can still decode the attachment using a command line tool tnef .

Install the command line tool with the command

Then you can easily decode the winmail.dat file into the original binary files with

Following is in case you are very unfamiliar with how the terminal works.

If you are not used to working with the terminal: the command above assumes that your current working directory (folder) is containing winmail.dat . You can easily open a terminal in the folder where your winmail.dat folder resides using the file manager.

Alternatively, you can open a terminal. By default, the current folder will be your home folder ( /home/ which can be indicated as ~ ). You can check in which folder you are with the pwd command. You can check what files are present in the current folder with the ls command. Otherwise, you need to first change to the directory where the file resides. There, you use the cd command. Suppose you downloaded the attachment in your «Downloads» folder, then you can in the terminal move to that directory with the command:

after which you will successfully be able to execute the command to decode the attachment.

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What is the winmail.dat attachment?

When people send messages from incorrectly configured Microsoft Outlook email clients, a file attachment called winmail.dat may be added as an attachment to the message. This file contains formatting information for messages that use Microsoft’s proprietary TNEF standard and any attachments sent with the original message. The file is not recognized by other email clients. Because of this, any attachments sent with the original message are not displayed in Thunderbird’s message pane.

If you try to open winmail.dat , you will probably be prompted to specify the application that should be used to open the file. Because this file is in a Microsoft proprietary Outlook/Exchange format, you may not have an application installed that can decode this file and display it. Even if your system is capable of displaying the file, it does not contain any useful information.

To prevent this file from being attached to messages, the sender of the message (or their system administrator) can configure various options as described in this Microsoft Support article.

There is also a Thunderbird add-on called LookOut which tries to decode the TNEF attachment ( winmail.dat ) and display the original attachments in Thunderbird’s message pane. This add-on is not provided or supported by Mozilla and its compatibility with future versions of Thunderbird is not assured. The best solution is to contact the message sender and inform them that their copy of Outlook is incorrectly configured as suggested in the Microsoft Support article.

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Andrew Beacock’s Blog

UPDATE: I have an improved version of the script available here.

I’m not going to repeat the many, many websites taking (and complaining) about Microsoft’s proprietary e-mail attachment format called TNEF.

I’m assuming that if you are reading this then you have found that these fixes are not working for you (or not possible to enforce). I’ll also assume that the LookOut Thunderbird Add-on by Aron Rubin is also not working correctly for you (this was my experience on Ubuntu Edgy Eft).

The best solution I could come up with was getting Thunderbird to run a script to unpack the winmail.dat extension into a folder on your Ubuntu desktop.

It relies on the tnef command-line program, so make sure that is installed first (it’s bundled with Ubuntu):

sudo aptitude install tnef

Below is my little script, save it in a file called ‘tnef.sh’ somewhere and make sure it’s executable ( chmod +x tnef.sh ) — or just download it here.

#!/bin/bash

LOCATION=~/Desktop/winmail.dat

mkdir $LOCATION
/usr/bin/tnef -C $LOCATION --save-body -f $1

Now find an email in Thunderbird with a winmail.dat attachment. Double click it and select to open it with the newly saved tnef.sh file:

Look on your desktop — there should be a ‘winmail.dat’ directory with the full contents of the attachment.

Double-clicking on any future winmail.dat file will result in the contents of the attachment to also be added to that directory.

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Comments

Please note that the version of LookOut on AMO is stale. The reviewers are taking quite some time to review version 1.1 while I have already released 1.2. Version 1.2 seems to fix all the bugs people were seeing both with install and behavior. You can a copy at the project’s web site — http://lookout.mozdev.org

Thanks Aron, and please note I wasn’t trying to put your excellent addon down just showing a different way after I couldn’t get it working correctly on Ubuntu.

Please keep up the excellent work on LookOut.

I took no exception to your comment. My real problem is with the AMO folks who have been sitting on the bug fix releases since July 7th. The reason BTW, it was not working on some Linux installs and OS X because I set the temporary file perms to 644 as if I was using chmod instead of 0644 which is the proper octal representation. There were a few other bugs too that I got much help in finding (the more eyes. ). Also it is worth mentioning that TNEF carries metadata, not just attachments. External programs cannot feed this metadata back into the mail/calendaring program. The real advantages will be realized when I integrate with Sunbird/Lightning.

Thanks for the update regarding your latest features, I’m very interested in what you said about Lightning and the TNEF metadata, I’ve posted today regarding Thunderbird and vCalendar events in Lightning.

Please keep me informed of any new releases of LookOut and I’ll give it another try on Ubuntu soon. 🙂

Hey, thanks for posting your solution to this. LookOut isn’t working for me either (LookOut 1.2 on Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 on Ubuntu 7.04) — it installs, but doesn’t seem to do anything with the winmail.dat files. So I extended your solution a bit:

#
# open_tnef.sh
#
# Creates a tmp dir, decodes the given TNEF file into that dir,
# and then launches nautilus for viewing.
#
# TODO: instead of letting random dirs accumulate, keep only
# N-most recent dirs, deleting older dirs
#

#
# Make sure given argument is a TNEF file
#
FILE_TEST=`file $1`
if [ «$FILE_TEST» != «$1: Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format» ]; then
echo «Given argument ‘$1’ is not a TNEF file»
exit 1
fi

#
# Set TMPDIR, if not already set
#
if [ «$TMPDIR» = «» ]; then
TMPDIR=/tmp
fi

#
# Create BASE_DIR, if not already created. All TNEF files will be
# decoded into random subdirs of this BASE_DIR.
#
BASE_DIR=$TMPDIR/open_tnef
if [ ! -d $BASE_DIR ]; then
mkdir $BASE_DIR
if [ «$?» != «0» ]; then
echo «Failed to create dir ‘$BASE_DIR'»
exit 1
fi
fi

#
# Name of given TNEF file will be used to create a random subdir
# to hold its contents
#
TNEF_FILE_NAME=`basename $1`

#
# Create a random subdir for contents of given TNEF file
#
CONTENT_DIR=`mktemp -d $BASE_DIR/$TNEF_FILE_NAME.XXXXXXXXXX`
if [ «$?» != «0» ]; then
echo «Failed to create dir ‘$BASE_DIR/$TNEF_FILE_NAME.XXXXXXXXXX'»
exit 1
fi

#
# Open the given TNEF file into the content dir
#
tnef —number-backups -C $CONTENT_DIR -f $1
if [ «$?» != «0» ]; then
echo «Failed to decode given TNEF file ‘$1′»
exit 1
fi

#
# View the content dir
#
nautilus $CONTENT_DIR
if [ «$?» != «0» ]; then
echo «Failed to launch nautilus»
exit 1
fi

That looks like a very useful version of the script, I’ll try that out this week and post back once I have an opinion! 🙂

This comment isn’t for abeacock, but rather, for anyone else who finds this page via googlemagic.

I was convinced that LookOut wasn’t working for me on Fedora Core 6. If I «Save As» or «Detach», it would ask me where I wanted the file. After choosing a destination directory, I found no files. I did this over and over again, disabling various other Thunderbird Extensions along the way, to see if I could uncover the source of a conflict.

After a bit of searching, however, I found the attachments successfully detached into /tmp, all 17 copies of them (from the 17 times I tried it — oops!).

Status on June 22, 2009 (for anyone who finds this through Google and is wondering if LookOut still poses problems) — on my Ubuntu 9.04 (64 bit) installation using the latest Thunderbird from the standard repo’s, LookOut is working perfectly. So no need for any custom scripting.

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Загрузка и установка дополнений Thunderbird

Далее в статье предлагается загрузить и установить различные дополнения Thunderbird. Общая инструкция по установке дополнений:

1. Загрузить файл с дополнением по указанной в тексте ссылке. В зависимости от используемого варианта ОС (используемой версии Thunderbird) может понадобиться подобрать совместимую версию дополнения;
2. В главном окне Thunderbird открыть меню настроек, для чего нажать кнопку с тремя полосками в правом верхнем углу главного окна и в появившемся меню выбрать пункт «Дополнения»:

Нажать кнопку с изображением «шестеренки»:

Настройка работы Thunderbird с MS Exchange по протоколу IMAP

Данная настройка понижает версию протокола обмена информацией между Thunderbird и MS Exchange, чем снижает защищенность информации.

При неправильной работе Thunderbird c MS Exchange по протоколу IMAP необходимо внести правки в настройки протокола обмена информацией, для чего:

Запустить web-браузер firefox;

security.tls.version.enable-deprecated=true security.tls.version.min=1

Импорт почты из формата PST (MS Outlook)

1. Установить пакет pst-utils (для Astra Linux Special Edition РУСБ.10015-01 (очередное обновление 1.7) — из расширенного репозитория, для более ранних выпусков из репозитория Debian (см. Подключение репозиториев с пакетами в ОС Astra Linux и установка пакетов)):

Для Astra Linux Common Edition 2.12.43 и Astra Linux Special Edition РУСБ.10015-01 (очередное обновление 1.7) применима версия дополнения importexporttools 10.0.4

В главном окне Thunderbird в левом дереве нажать правой кнопкой мыши на папку » Локальные папки» («Local Folders»);

Настройка автоматического архивирования

В главном окне Thunderbird в левом дереве нажать правой кнопкой мыши на папку » Локальные папки» («Local Folders»);

В главном окне Thunderbird в левом дереве нажать правой кнопкой мыши на название учетной записи ;

Включить отметку «Хранить архивированные сообщения в»;

В главном окне Thunderbird открыть меню настроек;

Чтение вложений winmail.dat (TNEF)

Для открытия файла вида winmail.dat в Thunderbird необходимо установить расширение «lookout_fix_version-3.0.6-tb.xpi». Страница загрузки: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/lookout-fix-version/?src=search

Проблема глобального поиска в сообщениях (Ctrl+K)

Для включения глобального поиска в сообщениях выйти из Thunderbird и удалить файл «global-messages-db.sqlite» из профиля пользователя (подкаталог .thunderbird/*.default/ в домашнем каталоге пользователя).

Настройка автоответчика на время отпуска

1. Создать новое сообщение (можно использовать горячую клавишу Ctrl+N);

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