how can I open and view a winmail.dat file on my pearl?

You can't. That filetype attachmend is not viewable on the BB.

If your on Lotus Notes, there is a third party utility that can read this if you can forward it to a regular email client. You detach the dat file and run this utility to open the dat. It will allow you to at least look at the contents. I found this on Google. (free app)

Sure, I can read it on the PC. We get .dat files often miscoded from PC to MAC users in our business.

But "on the Pearl"?

Like you said, no way. I just wanted to offer a solution. Some folks with Lotus get completely bamboozeled with this attachment. So, I am offering a way for the user to view the dat file if he needed to.

Ttyl...

H.

No prob. Aren't the winmail.dat file more of a product of some kind of faulty mime translation in email attachments?

As far as I know it is the result of using RTF in Outlook and having that sent to Lotus user. Winmail.dat is generated when an Outlook user sends a message in Outlook Rich Text format. This file contains all the rich formatting (fonts, color, size, attachment, form definition, .etc) wrapped into a nice little package that only other Outlook users can decipher. The recommended way to lose this file is to send a message in Plain Text which Lotus can use. There are other examples and some conditions that exist where users use Word as the defualt editor in Outlook as well.

H.

eh, I don't use RTF in my email on Outlook, but HTML.

The only people I know that get winmail.dat files from me are two in my office, when I place an attachment in the email, who receive using Entourage on Macs.. Of course I don't hear from everyone I email.

@chuck11976: Seems to be no way on the BB. Like many other mailclients it does not recognise the TNEF-Mimetype. You have to forward these mails to an account you can access from a PC. There you can open the Mail using outlook or use one of the progs, that decode this filetype. More information and links to several programs you find here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Format

J...

there was one item that came up regarding contacts in your address book. I think there is a setting in your address book contact properties that will tell outlook how you want to email that person. ie: HTML or RTF etc.

Now, there is still the issue with the attachments that I did not expand upon on the reply. When you send some attachments to folks on different platforms/email systems you can get the winmail.dat issue again. And this like you said, you are sending html format. On the Experts-Exchange forum they expanded upon this issue but it seemed the thread did not shed any light on this behavior when it happens. There seems to be several ways this can happen.

When an Outlook user composes and sends a message using either Rich Text Format or HTML Format, Outlook automatically generates a file, winmail.dat, and attaches it to the end of the message. winmail.dat contains formatting information, in a human-unreadable form, that Outlook will use on the receiving end to display this email message correctly. Unfortunately, Outlook is the ONLY email client program that can use this information! Netscape Messenger, Eudora*, and other email client programs don't understand this information. Very common problem when sending media/pdf/etc. attachments from PCs running Outlook to Macs. Sending in plain text format is the easiest workaround.