Garbage Text

[BlueT]

Why do I receive garbage text(ascii) in the body of an email with attachments? The attachments are not in a file but in ascii form.

Another user receives it and can read the email and the attachements as files attached.

The sender is using outlook express. Anything to do with this?

I'm using Outlook 98. I suspect it could be the settings in the outlook. Anyone can advise? Thanks.

 

[sleipnir214]

It sounds to me like you are looking at the MIME encoding of the file.

Your problem is probably Outlook 98. It has been known to have a great many bugs in it, particulary where MIME handling is concerned. ______________________________________________________________________
Perfection in engineering does not happen when there is nothing more to add.
Rather it happens when there is nothing more to take away.

 

[joegz]

That is an old problem before MIME became a standard protocol for e-mail across didn't mail type platforms. For instance if the mail was encoded in binhex or uuencoding then attachments would end up showing as the gibberish you are seeing.

MIME has now become the main standard so this problem doesn't really pop up that often. It isn't a problem between the two applications but more of an issue between the two mail systems (although it is possible to set the encoding in the application but most users would have to be told probably to change the encoding intentionally by an administrator) being able to translate each others encoding.

Problem is you really don't know which side is causing the problem so both sides need to check if MIME is being used as the standard.

DATAVIZ (dataviz.com) makes an application called Conversions Plus that takes these e-mails with gibberish and turns it back into the original attachment. I bought a copy when this program first came out about 6-7 years ago when this really used to be a big problem but I haven't needed it at all since then. joegz
"Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is."

 

[TimK01]

Just to extend this thread a little. I have a friend who has Outlook express and Outlook on the same machine. Both email programmes send some word attachments as Mime attachments and some as word attachments.

It is consistent ie the same attachment is either encoded or not encoded every time it is sent.

Emails eithout attachments are readable and come through as normal text. But add the relevant word attachment and it comes through as 2 emails both containing only a Mime attachment in te format ATT00034.TXT opening that you can reat the text portion of the message but not the attachment.

Has anyone met this and do you know how it is controlled?