IT Queries: Computer problems answered

I use the Blind Carbon Copy in Yahoo web mail to send Word documents to around 30 addressees. One of the recipients receives the attachment as a .dat extension (in lieu of a .doc file) and cannot open it. If I send the attachment as a one off to that person it is received as a .doc file and can be opened without problem.

The recipient’s son suggests I use Plain Text in lieu of Rich Text. The only reason I use Rich Text is because Yahoo generally defaults to it. I wouldn’t have thought that Rich Text would be the cause.

The problem is Rich Text and it’s a long standing issue. Emails created in Rich Text store their formatting information in the DAT file. Most email readers will read the DAT file and apply the formatting to the mail message.

Some email programs can’t handle the Rich Text format so just show the raw text in the body and the DAT file as a separate attachment.

The recipient’s son is quite right, the only way to overcome this problem is to turn off Rich Text. We find HTML is the best way to format email messages and we’d also recommend sending Microsoft Word attachments as a PDF file to overcome similar problems with Word.

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