There's nothing you can do to change the way OE acts. Internet Explorer
behaves the same way when downloading files from the Internet. It's a
design choice that Microsoft made.

The error is in Hotmail. It is saying contradicting things about what
the attachment is. in THIS case, your web mail believing the content
type rather than the file extension works better. In other cases (with
less widely used file types), believing the file extension works better.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"sparklinbluiz" wrote in
message ...
So I guess my next question would be...is there any way to get Outlook
Express to recognize it properly the way my webmail does online? If
its is
deciphered properly when it reaches my comcast mail online, then it is
Microsoft's Outlook Express that is causing the problem when it gets
to my
inbox on my pc! (gee what a surprise!) I really hate using webmail and
would
hate to have to now do both OE and webmail depending on who the email
is from!

Thanks again for your help, Michael.

sparklinbluiz

"Michael Santovec" wrote:

As you've found the problem is most likely to occur when messages are
forwarded through multiple mail services. AOL to Hotmail is a prime
example.

When an attachment is included in a MIME format message, there are
two
pieces of information that tell what type of file it is
1) MIME Content Type
2) File Extension

When these conflict, some programs give priority to one and some to
the
other. Microsoft gives priority to the file extension. It ignores
the
content type unless there is no file extension. What's happening in
your case is that content type says that the attachment is an e-mail
message but the file extension says that it's a text file. So
apparently the Comcast web mail is giving priority to the content
type.

So the cause of the problem is Hotmail fumbling the forward from AOL
and
creating the conflict. Considering that Hotmail is from Microsoft,
it's
typical of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"sparklinbluiz" wrote in
message ...
Seems like an awful lot of work to read an email! What confuses me
is
why I
can go online to my comcast email and read it in perfect format,
but
when it
downloads into Outlook Express it is reformatted. Why would it
change
format
just because it comes through the program? None of my other emails
do
that
from other people. Even when I get email from aol users and I have
to
double
click the attachment line to open their emails, I can still read
the
email
when I open the attachment and the photos are still in tact. Their
emails
don't come attached as message5.txt.
Now here is something interesting..I just looked at one of the
email
messages online in my comcast webmail....it seems as if this person
is
forwarding emails that came to her from aol. So maybe she receives
it
as an
aol attachment, then forwards it to me from her hotmail and it is
coming in a
different format. I still can view it perfectly online but not in
Outlook.
Any ideas on that?

"Michael Santovec" wrote:

They are doing a forward as attachment which should result in an
EML
file attachment to you. But for some reason the file type is
getting
changed. What you need to do is save the message5.txt attachment
(e.g.
File, Save Attachments), then rename it to an EML file (e.g.
message5.EML) and then you can double click the EML file to open
and
view it.

For more on this, see the Problems and Complications section of
Decoding Internet Attachments - A Tutorial
http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_san...de.htm#problem

--

Mike - http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/techhelp.htm


"sparklinbluiz" wrote in
message ...
I hope someone can offer some advice. I use Outlook Express with
problems for
the most part, except when I receive email from a particular
friend
who
always uses hotmail. Whenever I receive email from this person,
the
"paperclip" indicates an attachment. When I open the message, in
the
attachment line appears :message5.txt (message size). When I
open
that, I
either get a lot of junk and have to pick through all the text
to
"find" the
real message, or, I get an enormous amount of what I call binary
picture junk
(I'm sure there is a more technical name for it) but it is
basically
the
spelled out numerical version of a photo. It is a bunch of
jargon
instead of
the photo.

When I log onto comcast.net and open my email on the web, the
photos
and
text appear perfectly. I have tried to play with my nortons
antivirus
anti-spam settings, my Outlook Express security settings, etc to
see
if I
have something set wrong and if I am somehow blocking these
images
but
I can
not figure this out. Can anyone suggest what the problem may be?
It
is
very
frustrating that this person keeps sending me email and I have
to
keep
deleting them or logging on to webmail.

Thank you!