Outlook: prevent winmail.dat - how it works

If you receive an email with the attachment "Winmail.dat", you can do little with it. The attachment can be prevented in Outlook 2016. We'll show you how.

Prevent winmail.dat in Outlook - causes

Before we show you how to prevent the "winmail.dat" file from being sent along, this chapter tells you the causes of the dubious attachment.

• The file contains information about the email that is intended for the Microsoft Exchange server. So if you are not using Outlook, this file is useless for you.
• Outlook uses a specially designed text format called "Rich Text Format" (RTF). All information from a mail is packed using the "Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format" (TNEF) method and attached to the mail.
• Since this is a format that can only be processed by an Exchange server, other email services cannot do anything with it.

How to prevent the "winmail.dat" attachment in Outlook

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Image 1: Prevent Outlook: winmail.dat - Click on the "Options" button under the "File" tab

Image 3: In the ribbon select "E-Mail" and under "Compose messages" click on "Plain text"

Image 3: Below you will find another drop-down menu under "Message format", select there "Convert to plain text format"

If you would now like to know how to prevent yourself from automatically sending the attachment "winmail.dat", you will find instructions here and a picture gallery that shows you what to do.

1. Start Outlook and open your mailbox.
2. Click on "File" and select your entry "Options" .
3. Select the "Email" option on the left.
4. Under " Compose messages" under the setting "Compose a message in this format", click on "Plain text ".
5. Then scroll down a little until you get to "Message Format" .
6. Under "When sending messages in rich text format to Internet recipients", select the setting "Convert to plain text format" .
7. Save your settings with a click on "OK" .

If you want to encrypt your emails in Outlook for security, we will show you in the next practical tip how to do this.