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We wrote this FAQ to answer the many questions we receive on this topic from our clients and other inquiring minds in the many electronic communities we frequent.

How to Deal With Attached Files Sent Across the Internet

Sound familiar? File attachments to email messages sent out across the Internet must be reduced to plain ASCII text and then, hopefully, reassembled into their proper format on the receiving computer.

Often the email client will do this for you. But with so many email programs in use, odds are you will eventually get a message with something that looks like this in it:

Hey Jim!

Here's that vital file you wanted. Hope you can read it.

------ =_NextPart_000_01BC1771.4FD16EC0
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="important.doc"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

e1xydGYxXGFuc2kgXGRlZmY4XGRlZmxhbmcxMDMze1xmb250dGJse1xmMVxmcm9tYW5cZmNoYXJz
ZXQyXGZwcnEyIFN5bWJvbDt9e1xmM1xmbW9kZXJuXGZjaGFyc2V0MFxmcHJxMSBDb3VyaWVyO317
XGY4XGZyb21hblxmY2hhcnNldDBcZnBycTIgVGltZXM7fXtcZjlcZnN3aXNzXGZjaGFyc2V0MFxm
cHJxMiBIZWx2ZXRpY2E7fX17XGNvbG9ydGJsO1xyZWQwXGdyZWVuMFxibHVlMDsNClxyZWQwXGdy
ZWVuMFxibHVlMjU1O1xyZWQwXGdyZWVuMjU1XGJsdWUyNTU7XHJlZDBcZ3JlZW4yNTVcYmx1ZTA7

While the person sending this just did a quick drag-and-drop, embedding a binary file into the email message as a cute little icon that they can just double-click on to extract, this is what you see on your end. So you call the sender and say, "Hey, that file you sent me came in as garbage! What's the story?"

They don't know what the problem is, so you fall back on a fax or even mailing a disk or the hard copy using the postal service! Eeeeeeeekkk!

Well, panic not! There are a number of utilities that can help you out here. The trick to using most of them is to know what the format of the attachment has been encrypted as; UUencoded, XXencoded, BinHex, or MIME files (base64, plain/text, and quoted-printable). Sheesh!

But wait! There is a better solution... don't bother with a bunch of separate decrypters, just get WinZip version 6.2. If you don't have the latest version of WinZip, then surf on over to http://www.winzip.com and pick up a copy right away. Install it, and you are ready to deal with those pesky email messages that are overflowing with ASCII characters.

The trick is to save the email message as a plain text file.

1. In your email client, select the message and from the File menu select Save As.
2. Save the file in a holding folder, created just this purpose. Make sure you save it as plain text.
3. Start WinZip and click on the Open button. Browse your way to the folder where you saved the message and open it.
4. WinZip opens the message and lists the file(s) that had been converted to a text stream in the body of the message.
5. Select the file and click on the Extract button.
6. Extract the file to the folder of your choice.

To further simplify this process, create a shortcut to the WINZIP32.EXE file in the d:\Windows\SendTo folder. Then you can save your email message as a TXT file, switch to Explorer and right click on the file name, and choose Winzip32.exe from the Send To cascading menu.

Another trick is to give the text file an extension of .UUE this causes the Extract To option to appear when you right click on the file, or you can simply double click on the file name and fire off WinZip.

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