The Winmail.dat fle is added to an Outlook 2000 e-mail message that was sent from Outlook 97 with RTF (318699)

SYMPTOMS

If you receive Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) mail from the Internet in Outlook 2000, and the message was sent with Microsoft Outlook 97 in Rich Text Formatting (RTF), a Microsoft file attachment called the Winmail.dat file may be added to the message. This attachment contains the Microsoft Exchange rich-text format information of the message being sent.

CAUSE

This problem can occur because there is an inconsistency process between Outlook 97 and Outlook 2000 when RTF messages are handled. In Outlook 97, the Winmail.dat file includes the RTF instructions, but in Outlook 2000, it assumes that the message header includes the RTF instructions.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

276367 OFF2000: How to Obtain the Latest Office 2000 Service Pack

The English-language version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

   Date          Size       File name     
   -------------------------------------------
   24-APR-2002   700,072    Outlmime_Admin.msp
   24-APR-2002   654,752    Outlmime.msp

After the fix is installed, the following files will have the listed attributes or later:

   Version     File name     
   ------------------------
   9.0.3170.0  Outlmime.dll

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 3 (SP-3).