My coworker just bought a new computer, and we think the following problem we've been having is because it is a Mac. She emails files to me and I store them on our network. She will send me a batch of .doc files, but one of them will end up being a .dat file. This is fine for me, because I can just change it to a .doc when I save it. It's not so fine for our clients she is emailing these files to, who are generally not computer savvy. The solution for now is for me to save and email these files, but if that goes on for long it will become a huge pain. Anybody know why this is happening and what we can do to make it stop?
We did try this and the file in it was a .dat But our clients would throw a fit if we emailed them zip files, so that still wouldn't be a solution.
Are you sure it's .dat an not .dot? I can't think of any reason a .dat file would be in there unless someone selected one too many files while attaching (Word Work Files are .dat, IIRC), but .dot is a Word template file which is fairly easy to save by accident.
Nope, .dat When I google it I get a lot of hits for winmail.dat which is an error caused by emailing using Outlook between Mac and Windows apparently.
I have seen this before, but couldn't remember the issue. Here's what I found in Google: http://www.fileinfo.net/extension/dat Notice explanation # 2, which is what I was sort of remembering. The client is not using Outlook, so they see the RTF information as a data file. They can safely ignore it, as it has nothing to do with the word document(s).
^ This is assuming, of course, that each of the .doc files is getting through as a .doc file, in which case the only problem is that there happens to be an extra file.
Which is not the case. For example if she emails me X.doc and Y.doc, I am receiving X.doc and Y.dat. P.S. I TPd your house.
I would say that you should just send two of everything, but that won't work when sending to the clients, which I gather is the concern here. I really don't have any great experience with Outlook so don't know what to say except that maybe the two of you should try to figure out whether there's any pattern. Is it the last document she attaches? The last one alphabetically? The smallest/biggest one? Oldest/newest? What happens if she only attaches one document? Also, have you tried opening one of the .dats with Word? Does it look screwy or normal? What if you change the file extension to .doc and try to open it with Word (I have NO idea how dangerous this may be, but the only danger should be that you get either an error message a headache from squinting at a lot of rubbish)? P.S. You fiend!
Is she sending the files as Windows-safe attachments? When she adds the attachment, there should be an option to do so (in Mail.app, anyway).
Well maybe she shouldn't be sending files to clients from her Mac. But if I was presented with this problem, this is what I would do first. If they are sent to you and then reformatted, it should only be these .doc files that should go to the client. And I see that this is what you are currently doing. Her Mac is not on your net. The files to clients should come off your net and not some home computer that is causing compatibility problems. Next I would investigate the technical fix. But I don't get why she would get a Mac if she has to send and receive files primarily to and from PC's?
Because Macs and PCs pretty much talk to each other seamlessly nowadays? I'm betting this is relating to the Windows-safe attachments issue, but I agree with Mewa that if this is her personal machine, she probably shouldn't be sending things to clients from it.
Is she using the stock Mail program that comes with OS X, or is she using...shudder...Entourage? See, everyone, there's definitely a MS product I can't stand!
