Can Messages be detected within TNEF (.dat) components ?
search cancel

Can Messages be detected within TNEF (.dat) components ?

book

Article ID: 159842

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

Data Loss Prevention Endpoint Prevent Data Loss Prevention Network Monitor Data Loss Prevention Network Prevent for Email

Issue/Introduction

Are there any known issues with handling TNEF extension files?

Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format or TNEF is a proprietary email attachment format used by Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server. An attached file with TNEF encoding is most often named winmail.dat or win.dat, and has a MIME type of Application/MS-TNEF. The official (IANA) media type, however is application/vnd.ms-tnef.

Within the Outlook e-mail client TNEF encoding cannot be explicitly enabled or disabled (except via a registry setting). Selecting RTF as the format for sending an e-mail implicitly enables TNEF encoding, using it in preference to the more common and widely compatible MIME standard. When sending plain text or HTML format messages, some versions of Outlook (apparently including Outlook 2000) prefer MIME, but may still use TNEF under some circumstances (for example, if an Outlook feature requires it).

Resolution

TNEF message components can be fully detected and are supported.
Please note that there has been the following bug reported, which is resolved in 10.5.1 .

eTrack 1858804
Fail to detect data in text files contained in TNEF encapsulation of emails