Message Processing

 

There are 3 different email formats used in Internet mails:

 

Plain Text: is unformatted text that contains nothing but letters. Plaintext has no bolding, Italic or pictures, graphics, tables, diagrams and etc.

 

Html Text: uses html functionality and modifiability to create texts with images, tables, formatting and anything that can be done in an html page.

 

Rich Text: uses formatting and can contain different diagrams, images and etc but can only be used by MS Outlook or MS Exchange.
 

 

In essence when using Rich Text formatting, Ms Outlook combines all the text and attachments into a single Winmail.dat file which are not recognizable by the normal email user. So with Message Processing in MailNow! 5, it is now possible to read the text and see the attachments sent in Rich Text format from. To configure the settings related to Winmail.dat (TNEF), navigate to System Settings | Message Processing. You will see a page like the one depicted below:

 

 

Under Incoming you will configure the TNEF parsing configuration for received mails. There are 3 states for incoming mails:

 

Disabled: Rich Text format emails will not be processed and therefore will not be readable.

 

Enabled for webmail only: Rich Text emails will be readable only if the user views the mail on webmail. But if the user uses other mail clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird (Except for Outlook) they will not be able to read the mail.

 

Enabled for webmail and other mail clients: Rich Text emails will be processed and readable on webmail or any other mail clients used.

 

Lastly is Only extract attachments but not rich text (RTF) content checkbox which determines to just extract the attachments found in the TNEF attachments while any rich text email (RTF) in it will not be extracted. The extraction of RTF email consumes a lot of CPU power and if you have no problem with the plain-text version of the email, you can check this checkbox.

 

Next is for configuration on TNEF parsing for Outgoing message:

 

To local domain: This setting specifies that MailNow! will automatically convert any winmail.dat (TNEF) attachment that it sees in outgoing mails sent to local domains (i.e. domains created on local MailNow! server). If a mail is composed using Outlook Rich Text format, all the attachments in the mail will be encapsulated in a single TNEF attachment called winmail.dat. MailNow! will now extract all the attachments in this file so any the recipients do not need Outlook to see the attachments. Additionally Outlook will also store the rich-text version of the mail in winmail.dat. MailNow! will extract this information and display the email with all its formatting.

 

-Disabled: Disables TNEF parsing for outgoing mails.

 

-Enabled: Enables TNEF parsing for outgoing mails.

 

-Next is Only extract attachments but not rich text (RTF) content checkbox which determines to just extract the attachments found in the TNEF attachments while any rich text email (RTF) in it will not be extracted. The extraction of RTF email consumes a lot of CPU power and if you have no problem with the plain-text version of the email, you can check this checkbox.

 

To non local domains: It is the same setting as the local domains except that the configurations here are effective for mails that are being sent to domains not created outside the local MailNow! server.