winmail.dat: the Curse of Outlook
Information spreads through the world freely. Messages are sent from Rome to Sydney, from Tokio to Caracas in a matter of seconds. The toughts travels at the speed of light and nothing can stop them!
Uhm…
Well..
This is true as soon as you don’t decide to switch your e-mail client!
As you know (do you? read some posts before this one) I am evaluating Linux for everyday use, with the exception of some windows-linked development things. I love the ideology of the Free Software.
So I decided to move all my e-mail into my new IMAP server.
Why?
Because doing so I should have all my mail in my server, being able to access it from everywere, with every e-mail client, with every operating system and with my browser too. Obviously I can take the copies of my mail directly on my laptop if I’m offline!
The solution seemed perfect so I started moving my 1.3 GB of mail into my server. Yes, moving all that space requires long time, but in the end Outlook was perfect: as I wished!
Then I rebooted my laptop in Ubuntu, logged in, opened my Thunderbird client, set up my IMAP connection and voila’ all my 5 years mail was there!
Yes, everyone with its own attachment!
What? Every mail have an attachment? No, impossibile!
Analyzing some of them I found that every e-mail had a unknown winmail.dat attachment, and no other files (even if in the original mail there were some). Making a long story short I’ve found that this one is a superb feature of Outlook: putting a property attachment to all the files when moving it into a server that is not Exchange!
Nooo…. AHRGH!
So, this solution is not available!
There are two different solutions still available:
- Changing my e-mail client also under Windows
- Importing my new mail from Outlook to Thunderbird every day and then uploading them into the IMAP server
Uhm… none of them are good solutions.
For the first one I will miss a lot of features that Outlook have. The synchronization with my PDA/Phone, the functionalities of my office’s Exchange Server and so on. I have to admit that Outlook 2003 is Very Good , but after having discovered this new feature, I like it less.
For the second options I think I’ll stop updating the mail in my IMAP server in some days, resulting in a complete mess of my mail, I know this and I want to avoid it! Of course you have to know that if you import your mail from Thunderbird (under windows you have the features to get them from Outlook) you can have everything you need, and then you can upload everything to the IMAP!
So, I’m still analyzing my problem, trying to find a solution that will help me with my Operating System Mail Crossover…
Microsoft have confirmed, another time, that its way of conquering the market is to tie their customers to them, putting more than some difficulties for those outcasts who decide to move away from their domain!
Another time Microsoft has shown that even if they have the best software on the market (Outlook, Visual Studio and many more… I have to admit this) they try to retain their customers not with the power of the software, but with some annoying features embedded in their software!
If someone of you have some good ideas to share, you are welcome!
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