thunderbird mails excell attachment

[m.eraj1995]

Dear Sir,

I am using thunderbird and when i receive any excell attachment is not opening and it is showing .dat format please help me i am instilling ubuntu on our organization
in all systems but because of this issue i am not able to install .

[DuckHook]

Please read this: https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-a-dat-file-2620550

.dat files are generic data files that can be anything. They have an underlying structure and could be a PDF file, a video file, a plain text file or, in your case, an Excel file. They are generated by Windows apps—often the Outlook e-mail client—that converts the original format into the generic one. In many cases, you can open the file simply by changing the ".dat" to ".xls" or whichever format the file actually is. The link above shows you how to determine the actual format of the file.

I don't know how to prevent Windows apps from converting stuff into .dat files. Haven't used Windows in years, so someone else will have to help you there. However, if you are converting your entire organization over to Linux and using T-Bird, then you won't be generating such files anyway and will only have to deal with files that you receive from outside.

You should be able to deal with those cases using the tactics in the link I've provided.

Good Luck!

[m.eraj1995]

Dear Sir,

after i saved it on .txt and also tryed .xls but still file is not opening it is showing something setting please find the attachment

[ajgreeny]

Try opening it in nano. You will probably get a lot of gibberish amongst the text but it may allow you to see, or at least guess from the fragments of normal text what it's saying.

This is unfortunately one of the very annoying things about Outlook being used for email by Windows users who give no thought about the recipient's software.

Another possibility if you have an Android phone or tablet is to view the email using that and save the attachment; it is very possible from my own experience that Android will save the winmail.dat in the same filetype when as it was attached.

[m.eraj1995]

still not opening sir

[DuckHook]

Are you sure it is an Excel file? What are all the other Excel extensions (it has been years since I've used Excel and I don't know them all anymore)? Did you follow ajgreeny's advice? If you did, describe in detail what happened.

[ajgreeny]

It looks as if you may need to install Outlook for android before you can open that winmail.dat file, but I have done it using my Android phone which had Outlook already installed. I assumed it was in all Android systems but apparently not.

[m.eraj1995]

dear sir,
i am sure that is exell sheet receivedd from my IT team member ,
and one more thing is i only receiving winmail.dat from my team members outlook only and i tryed that
from another system that excell attachment is opening on my system.

[speartip]

According to DuckHook's link in post 2. .dat files are "malformed attachments from a microsoft email client".
So if my thinking is correct something is going wrong from the senders side.
All excel files should have the suffix .xls or .xlsx. And should open with LibreOffice.

[m.eraj1995]

Issue has been resolved , issue is from sender side only.