Having received another letter in the mail, the user may encounter a situation that some of the information in it is missing and there is winmail.dat in the file list. This file can be downloaded to a computer without any problems, but it cannot be opened by regular means. In this case, important information may be in the winmail.dat file, since, in fact, this file can be called a kind of archive with data. In this article, we will look at why winmail.dat may appear in the file list, and also how to open it better on your Mac.
Click this and you'll see the default app associated with this file type. Now click on the dropdown menu, select a new default, then click the Choose All button. From now on, all files of that.
Why .dat File Don’t Open Correctly on Mac?
Messages sent from older versions of Microsoft email applications, such as Outlook or Microsoft Exchange, may include an attachment with a winmail.dat in the name. This file is not displayed in the sending application, but is displayed in Mail. In other mailers, it may appear as a MIME section with the name application/ms-tnef. This happens when the sending application uses the TNEF format.
Read more:How to Solve Problems with the Work of the Mail App after Updating macOS?
Open .dat File on Mac
In most cases, DAT files are files that are incorrectly attached to e-mails; they are called “winmail.dat” or “ATT0001.dat”. Follow the steps below:
- Open the email with the attachment. In most cases, winmail.dat;
- Click on the file and selectSave Attachment;
- Go to Download folder;
- Right-click on .dat file and select Open with;
- In the list, select TextEdit;
- In this program, you can open most text files, view the text and find out which program this DAT file works with.
Note: If the .dat file does not open in TextEdit, most likely it is not a text file. Remember that some .dat files are locked and cannot be opened.
Winmail.dat Viewer for Mac
To view the files winmail.dat there are some applications for macOS. Open App Store and search for:
- Winmail.dat Viewer;
- Open Winmail.dat – File Opener.
This apps could open winmail.dat files, also apps extremely simple and free.
Conclusion
Please note, I do not recommend downloading files from winmail.dat that are suspicious and are executable, that is, they have the format .exe, .cmd and others. In all other cases, as can be seen from this material, the problem with the .dat format is very easy to solve.
Whenever you download or create any given file on your Mac, it is instantly assigned a default application to open it, which you can easily identify by the file’s thumbnail in most occasions. However, double clicking on the file will open it in that application and that one alone.
If you need to open that file with another app though, you can right-click on the file, choose Open With and then choose another app from the available ones in the list.
But what if you want to have not just that one, but all other files of the same format to be opened with an application other than the default one?
Here are two different methods you can use to achieve this:
Setting Default File Associations
Method 1
Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Other… from the available options. A dialog box will appear showing you all the applications that might be able to open the file.
Step 2: Select one application from among the list and make sure to check the Always Open With checkbox. Once you do, click Open. The file will open in the application you chose and from then onwards, all files of that type will have that application set as their default.
Tip: If the application you want is greyed out, select All Applications from the Enable: drop down menu.Method 2
Step 1: Right-click on the file and select Get Info to bring up the file’s information panel. Alternatively, you can just press the keyboard shortcutCommand + I.
Step 2: On that panel, look for the Open with: section and select another application from the drop down menu. Once you do, click the Change All… button below for all files of that type to open with your selected application from then onwards.
Also note that if no other application is available on the list, you can still choose Other… to bring up the same dialog box mentioned previously and follow from there.
Removing Default File Associations
There might be times when a file is associated with the wrong application or you simply want a certain kind of file not to be associated with any particular application, like when you want to manually choose the app to open them for example.
To do this in just a few clicks, you need to download a small, simple Preference Pane Extension called RCDefaultApp. Head to this website to download it. Once you do, install it.
Set Default File For Dat Files Macos Mac
Once you install it and open it, go to the Extensions tab and scroll across all the available file types there until you find the one that you want to make “neutral”. Once you find it, you will see the app set for it as the default one to open those types of files. Click on that same drop down menu to reveal its options and select disable.
Once you are done, all the files of the type you chose will be “neutral” and ready for you to assign them to an application or to open them with any app you choose.
That’s it for this entry. Hope you find these tips useful!
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#file viewer #How-to/Guides
Did You Know
Times Square is one of the most geotagged places on Instagram.