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Information for Microsoft Exchange users who use mailing lists
The following message gives instructions to MS Exchange users on how to stop those pesky WINMAIL.DAT files from polluting mailing lists.
From: uk-motss-server@dircon.co.uk
Subject: uk motss server: exchange
Errors-To: uk-motss-request@dircon.co.uk
X-Disclaimer: The information provided below is made available on a
best effort basis. No responsibility is accepted for
its accuracy or its consequences. Please refer to the
archive guide for more information.
X-Server-Version: Secure server 1.4e 17th May 1994
Status: RO
Information for Microsoft Exchange users
========================================
If you use Microsoft Exchange to read and send mail, please take the
time to read this text carefully. If you do not follow the
instructions, you will have difficulty posting to some forums on the
Internet.
The Exchange Problem:
=====================
When Microsoft Exchange is used to send mail to Internet addresses, it
sometimes includes extra material at the end of your message. Other
Exchange users will not see this material - it will be decoded and
used to tell their copy of Exchange which fonts and colours you used -
but people using other mail programs will just see lots of garbage
tacked on the end of your message, or they will be told that there is
a file attached to the message. The majority of people on the Internet
do not use Exchange, and these attachments aren't any use to them.
As far as I have been able to tell through experimentation, it is not
possible to change a single configuration option to prevent unwanted
attachments with Exchange. You must change the appropriate option for
each Internet address that you send mail.
Sending attachments with your mail
==================================
It is not possible to turn attachments on and off for a particular
message. Whether or not attachments are added to your message seems to
depend on whether you are using sending to an entry in the address
book, or to an address that you just typed in.
When an address is not in the address book, you can use colour, fonts
and different styles in a message, but MS Exchange will usually
discard it all before sending the message, without telling you that it
is doing so. Sometimes, however, attachments will be added; according
to the help file, this happens when you use a 'one shot' address - one
that's just typed in to the To: box.
If an address is in the book, you can tell Exchange whether or not you
want the information about colour, fonts and so on included when you
send mail to that address. The only reliable way to control whether or
not attachments are sent is to send mail using the address book entry
every time, and to configure the entry so that attachments will not be
sent.
To configure this, pull down the Tools menu in Exchange and select
Address Book. Find the entry that you want to change and double click
on it. Now, if it's not on top automatically, click on the tab marked
"SMTP - Internet"
You will see two boxes, labelled "Display Name" and "E-mail address."
Check that these are correct, and then look at the check box below,
which is labelled "Always send messages in Microsoft Exchange rich
text format."
Unless you know that the people you are writing to also use MS
Exchange, you should make sure that there is NO TICK IN THIS BOX. When
this box is ticked, Exchange adds attachments to your message, giving
details about fonts and colours in a non-standard Microsoft format.
If in doubt about the mail program that someone else is using, or if
you are posting to a public forum such as a mailing list or a
newsgroup, you should ensure that this option is turned off.
Sending unnecessary attachments is anti-social and wasteful. How
wasteful? A message 38 letter long, with one word in colour and one in
a different font, acquires an attachment of 1514 letters to describe
it to Exchange users!
WINMAIL.DAT and application/ms-tnef
===================================
These are the two things that appear in mail that you send to other
people from Exchange; WINMAIL.DAT is a UUencoded file, and
application/ms-tnef is a MIME type. Both have the same effect on
people not using Exchange - they see garbage at the end of your
messages, and often have to pay to download it.
Options for attachments are set in Exchange via the Tools menu; select
Services, then choose Internet Mail and select Properties. The button
near the bottom of the Window labelled Message Format allows you to
choose whether MIME format messages are sent from MS Exchange.
In general, it is probably better to use MIME than not; if you don't
select MIME, Exchange will use UUencoding, which is an older and less
sophisticated way of handling attachments.
Exchange and the uk-motss mailing lists
=======================================
Both the uk-motss and uk-motss-women lists are currently set up to reject
any messages that contain file attachments, including information from
Microsoft Exchange, whether in MIME or UUencoded formats.
If your post is returned to you by the list system, with an error that
includes either:
'UUencoded file attachments are not allowed on this list'
or
'The MIME content type application/ms-tnef is not allowed on this list'
then Microsoft exchange is adding extra information to the bottom of
your messages, and you should follow the instructions above to prevent
this happening in future.
The best solution is to create an entry in your address book for each
list that you are a member of, and set it up as described above. Make
sure that you always use the address book entry when you send mail to
the list.
Nigel Whitfield,
List Maintainer.
================
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