Dumb and Old

A .dat file could be anything so best to open it with the program that wrote it. You can try notepad might read it. A win.dat file sounds like it could be old outlook file. Didn't get any hits off it. Came up winmail.dat

can you have it resent to you? have them do this prior to retrying.The sender can change the format of the email messages that they send by using the following steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Mail Format.
2. In Compose in this message format, click to select Plain Text, and then click OK.

I get 150,000 lines of this:

ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ 7 7
7 *†H†÷
7 7 ú @ û @Ý£WE³ @ ü @Ý£WE³ ý þ ÿ ! ¥ë ø õïmÁ1

I'm going back to work where I have a computer tha Should read it.

If that fails, I'll just e-mail the kid to re-format it. (The kid's 41)



Never mind! This is all it was.

Kids!!

Yuk yuk......dat's funny....

I put that on the noticeboard at work last year .

He renamed it so they wouldn't know he was divulging proprietary information.

Great link (I'm assuming it works). Some pilchard recently sent me (and half of Blighty a .docx). The sender is still a pilchard, but I'll be intrigued to see if that works.

Why on earth said pilchard didn't circulate his file in an easy access format, I have no idea.

Thanks, Kram, I now know why I still keep visiting here.

It works, but in lyn's case, it opened and just showed the computer code.

Open Office would have done it. doc files are written in MS Office, so it takes either that, or something like Open Office to read them properly.

The other is small, and still handy to have around though.

Open Office will open .docx files ?

http://www.docx.net/how-to-open-docx-with-openoffice

Thanks.

Cheers .

You can thank Bill Gates and crew for .docx files. That's how they "improved" Word for Windoze 2010. They scrambled everything so you had to relearn Word and the other junk, made little or no functional improvements, made new .docx files unreadable in older word .doc programs (without converting) and plucked another $100 mil out of our pockets.

Can I declare open season on Kram if his link doesn't work ? Haven't tried it yet (the link, not declaring open season ).

It still boggles my mind that somebody sent out a file in .docx format. I had a second email from the same person because they hadn't got many replies. Not sure I trust myself to send a helpful and informative reply at the weekend.˙ǝןʇqns ǝq ʇsnظ pןnoɥs ı ǝqʎɐɯ

It's open season of him ALL THE TIME!!!!

win.dat is not a usable file and format that should contain any useful information.

It maybe is:

1. a file fragment of something that has been send and cut into pieces during transfer, recommend resending the e-mail.

2. is unwanted attachment of any sort (think virus or other data) - delete and don't try to open it

3. is a system file that for some reason was send without explanation what to do with it.

4. is a database file that should be loaded with a appropriate data base application.

5. it is a system attachement (Outlook does this sometimes) that has no further use.

This is what I think this is. What is the size and what was it your son wanted to send you?

You missed some.

Is what he sent me.

Yes I missed this one. So was .dat the real file extension?

winmail.dat

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278061

The Winmail.dat file is used to preserve Rich Text formatting. Outlook uses it when sending a Rich Text-formatted message. During transport, the content of the message may be changed, preventing the receiving client from being able to read the formatting instructions. In other cases, the receiving client does not use or recognize the winmail.dat file.