Just to add to this discussion, I forwarded the winmail.dat excel file to
myself. I have XP, IE6, and Outlook. When it came back, I was able to open
it. Do not have any idea what changed but I got the information. Went back
and tried again to open the winmail file and could not. !!!!!

"Geoff B" wrote:

You can open the file in notepad. If it is just raw data with no formatting
or program commands then you can save the file as a .txt and then open it in
XL and text to columns will (maybe) put the data into the appropriate
columns.
If there is any formatting or program commands from the program that
created this file then the file will be basically unusable unless you want to
spend a long time deleting the gobbledy gook from between the data you need.
If you have received the file from someone ask them to send it to you again
in the correct format. Most likely they have just sent you the wrong
download file from their system or they have assumed that you have the same
software that they use. Good luck.




"Gord Dibben" wrote:

*.dat files could have been created by a multitude of applications.

Excel is not one of them and will not open them.

See here for possible source of *.dat files

http://filext.com/alphalist.php?extstart=%5ED


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:55:02 -0700, dsears
wrote:

Earlier versions of Excel spreadsheet files have .xls at the end. I believe
that the newer versions have .dat at the end.

"Bob I" wrote:

What is a .dat file?

dsears wrote:
Is there any way to "add" to my version 2003 Excel the ability to read .dat
files?