Viewing Excel Attachments in Mail

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I have a client who weekly sends me an Excel spreadsheet as an e-mail attachment.

It appears on my Windows PC just fine but never shows on my MacBook or I Phone. As I'm about to go fully Mac, this will be a problem in the future.

As an experiment, I have copied the spreadsheet across from my PC to the MacBook and then from the Mac sent it as an e-mail attachement to myself and have then successfully picked it up on the Mac.

I guess my conclusion from that is that its a problem at my client's end not mine but does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers

Bob
 
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How about zipping the excel file before sending it across? It is weird that you aren't receiving an attachment just on the mac. What about in the web browser? Does it show there?
 
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Well, when an e-mail comes in from the client there is no indication that there is an attachment on it so there's effectively nothing to open. The same message on a PC though has the attached excel file.

The client had sent me a zipped file containing a spreadsheet a few days back so I have just fowarded that across and tried to open it on the Mac. It shows an attachment called Winmail.dat and then doesn't know which program to open it with.

Not sure if that helps..........
 
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The client had sent me a zipped file containing a spreadsheet a few days back so I have just fowarded that across and tried to open it on the Mac. It shows an attachment called Winmail.dat and then doesn't know which program to open it with.

Winmail.dat comes from a quirky bug that occurs when a Rich Text Formatted email is composed using Outlook and then opened by another software program besides Outlook. It contains formatting info used to render the email. It is not designed to be opened by any application. Usually resending the email in plain text format prevents it from happening.

This type of thing is particularly frustrating when working with business clients, as it doesn't seem like they should have to jump through hoops to send you an email.
 

chscag

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Which Windows OS is your client using? If your client is using Outlook Express (XP) or Windows Mail (Vista) or even Outlook, Office attachments should not be a problem. You might ask the client how he's attaching the files, although it's really a no-brainer in Windows. Also, do you have Office installed on your Mac?

Regards.
 

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