# file extentions



## airforce16764 (Jun 5, 2007)

Hi - received some photos from a friend who thought they would come as .jpeg files but they came in as winmail.dat....he has a PC...poor chap

Is there any way to change the .dat extention to something which iPhoto would recognize and open these files ?

Thanks.


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## namenotfound (Apr 30, 2005)

Changing extensions do not always change file type.

Example: Changing a file from "me.mov" to "me.avi" doesn't magically change the format of the video.

To change the extension, just rename the file with a different file extension.

Click on the file once, wait a second, click again, now you can type in a new name and extension.


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## TD912 (Jun 23, 2008)

.dat is a very vague extension, simply meaning "data". I doubt changing the extensions would do anything.

The files are probably in some obscure format used by whatever program the PC user was using.

I think the only way to view them would be to resend them in a better format, such as JPEG.


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## jfm429 (Jun 8, 2007)

winmail.dat is a proprietary file that some Windows mail clients (Outlook Express, if my memory doens't fail me) create. They actually _contain_ the attachments. A friend of mine sent a file to my Mac and I got that, but I forwarded it to my Windows computer and it showed up fine. The probable solution is to tell the other person to set their email settings to send plain text emails. See http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~jbenson/resource/winmail.htm for more info.


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## airforce16764 (Jun 5, 2007)

Thank you all for the helpful suggestions.

Have asked sender of photos to resend using "plain text" vs "HTML" and if that doesn't work, he will use a different format to send.

Cheers

Airforce


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## Serge_N_Gin (Sep 7, 2004)

airforce16764 said:


> Hi - received some photos from a friend who thought they would come as .jpeg files but they came in as winmail.dat....he has a PC...poor chap
> 
> Is there any way to change the .dat extention to something which iPhoto would recognize and open these files ?
> 
> Thanks.


Your friend needs to disable _"Create messages in MS Office 200X format"_ in MS Outlook then resend the message.

FWIW, Mail.app can display the text contents any _messages_ stored in Microsoft's TNEF or winmail.dat format with the keystroke _Command-Option-P_, which in the menu, is the _View » Message » Plain Text Alternative item_.

Here is a useful link:

_OMiC - Process Microsoft Outlook winmail.dat files in Apple Mail_.



> _Browser attachment of a winmail.dat file like other attachments
> 
> Most of the time you receive winmail.dat files from Microsoft Outlook users who send mails with attachments. You can try to convert these with other tools, but nothing is so seamles integrated into Apple Mail as OMiC._


For Leopard users of Mail.app, Command-[ and Command-] have been replaced by Command-Option-[ and Command-Option-].


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## airforce16764 (Jun 5, 2007)

almost feel guity to say this - but my correspondent went to SKYPE and forwarded the photos one by one. I simply dragged and dropped them into iPhoto....no problems.

i will keep all your suggestions however in case it happens again....I;ll then be able to solve the problems quickly.

thank you one and all.:up:


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## Serge_N_Gin (Sep 7, 2004)

airforce16764,

Glad it's all worked out fine ... you might want to mark this as "Solved" using the pull-down menu at the top ... IIRC, it's under "Thread Tools" but only visible to the Thread Creator.


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