Have you ever received an e-mail that had a winmail.dat attachment?  Have you ever wondered what it is?

The winmail.dat attachment is created when the sender of the email has set their Outlook to format new emails in RTF (Rich Text Format).  The sender doesn't see the attachment when they create the email, rather it is generated as it makes its way to your Inbox because of a variety of reasons.  The winmail.dat attachment appears with their email and there really isn't much much we can do about receiving it.

On the other hand, if your email recipients say they keep getting winmail.dat attachments, you can change your email format to keep from sending this attachment again.  Here's how:

In Outlook:
1. Tools > Options
2. Click the 'Mail format' tab
-In the 'Compose in this message format' field
3. Select 'HTML' from the drop-down list
4. Click 'Apply'
5. Click 'OK'

When you send your next email, you'll be good to go!