Problems Sending Attachments (Mac)

ISSUE:

I send attachments but they aren't being received properly!

SOLUTION:

When your recipients receive attachments as garbled text within the body of the message, it means that the attached file didn't get decoded on arrival. This may be because the recipient's mail program doesn't know how to decode the encoding method you use, or it could be because a gateway somewhere between you and them changed the message's headers so it was undecodable.

(AOL is especially bad about this, because their proprietary mail systems require gateways between their users and the Internet).

Try sending yourself attachments with various encoding methods. You can change the encoding method for an attachment you're sending out with the encoding icon at the top of a new message. By default, it's set to AppleDouble, which is how Mac Eudora does MIME-encoding. Other choices are AppleSingle, which is MIME-encoding for Macs only. Uuencode is the best choice for sending attachments to people with older PC or UNIX systems. BinHex is usually compatible with old Macintosh mailers and previous versions of Eudora (see http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1227hq.html for more information).

If the attachments you send yourself contained garbled text, your server or Internet Service Provider may have a problem; contact them. If the attachments you send yourself are OK, but some of your recipients have trouble receiving them, it's probably because the messages to them had their headers modified in transit, or because the recipient's mail program doesn't understand the encoding method you used.

What can you do? Well, you can try using a different encoding method. The Internet standard is MIME (AppleDouble), and that's the best choice in most situations. If you're running into the problem we described above, try one or all of the following:

1. Use Uuencode or BinHex encoding.

2. Turn Quoted Printable Encoding off (the QP button at the top of an outgoing message).

3. When sending to a PC, turn "Include Macintosh Information" off (the little Mac icon in the new message icon bar), and make sure you're not sending with AppleSingle encoding (the square icon, third from the left, on the new message icon bar).

4. Try lowering the buffer size in Eudora. To do this, copy and paste this URL into a new message in Eudora:

 <x-eudora-setting:5816=260>

A new window will appear. Click on Set Setting.

5. If all else fails, try Uuencoding the attachment and having the recipient manually decode it. When they get it, if the Uuencoded message is still undecoded and included in the body of the message, have them copy all the garbled text into a single, plain-text file. Then have them run a Uudecoding utility on the text file. They can download a shareware Uudecoding utility from any shareware website.

--

KEYWORDS: ALLCARDS, EPMAC, ATTACHMENT, DECODE, MIME,BINHEX,ENCODING, UUENCODE