Letter Opener: Open Winmail.dat on iPhone, iPad & Mac

Have you ever received a mail with a Winmail.dat attachment? If this happens often, we have a solution.

Winmail.dat – this is the biggest cramp since Microsoft Outlook has been around. Mac users can’t open these mail attachments, and they only get completely empty mail in case of doubt. How does this happen, and what can be done about it?

The origin of the problem lies in the Windows mail program Outlook, where you can send mails as “rich text” in addition to the formats “text only” and “HTML.” The problem is that, other mail programs not recognize the RTF format correctly.

Instead, displaying the file Winmail.dat, the Outlook often contains not only information on formatting but also mail attachments.

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Winmail.dat and Apple: Only with the right app

If you now get such an email, there are two options: write back to the sender and explain the problem or try to open the Winmail.dat file yourself. This works with the appropriate app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Letter Opener (App Store link) is available for iOS and Mac (Mac Store link). You can install Letter Opener for free on the iPhone or iPad, but to open Winmail.dat, you have to unlock the premium package for $3.99. On the Mac, you can get the “Lite version” for $2.99.

Letter Opener Pro is also offer on the developer’s website. This is a plugin that integrates Letter Opener directly into Apple’s Mail app and opens Winmail files directly as if they were normal attachments.

Letter Opener Pro costs around $19.99 and you can try out free of charge for 14 days beforehand. That’s exactly what we did and found out: It works. As a cheap alternative for the Mac, we can give you Winmail Extractor (Mac Store link) for $0.99.

The app works similarly to Letter Opener Lite. You have to open the Winmail.dat files manually, but then all contents and possibly hidden attachments are displayed.

[appbox appstore id635655539]

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