The MIME on Outlook Express seems to be broken. We have seen several instances where Outlook Express users cannot read Email sent by UNIX Email clients. The message is garbled with lots of question marks and other random characters. We have had this problem here at netadmintools.com, since we use Linux Office Suite 99 for our main workstation. We found that Eudora 4.0, Exchange 5.5 client, Outlook 98, and even pine clients running on SCO could read our email just fine. The problem seems to be isolated to Outlook Express. Both the Outlook Express that comes with IE 4.01 and the one that comes with Windows 98 seem to be broken. We tried the latest patch for Outlook Express (8/98), but that did not help. You can tell if MIME is enabled by the EMail headers:

This EMail works with an Outlook Express client:

General: Attachment Format: uuencode
Subject: test
X-Status: N
X-Mailer: Applixware 4.41 (1021.211)
X-UIDL: 186171097b540658d414f6b565ca0245

This EMail doesn’t work with an Outlook Express client:

General: Attachment Format: MIME
Subject: t1
X-Status: N
X-Mailer: Applixware 4.41 (1021.211)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; name=”Body”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-UIDL: ba25978ac1e0a86e15f86919d3442210

It appears that the problem is simply that Outlook Express can’t read the MIME Content-Type: text/plain. It may also be the Content-Transfer-Encoding line, but regardless, all other email clients we have tested with can deal with our Applix mail just fine.

The fix is to disable MIME completely on the mail client that is sending the message. For Applixware:

1) Compose an Email

2) Go into Lists>Recipient Preferences

3) Uncheck MIME for the particular recipient, or type * for all recipients.

This is sad, because we are essentially limiting the function of our Email client so we can communicate with one particular Email client (Outlook Express). Of course, there are a lot of Outlook Express Email clients out there. Even if/when Microsoft fixes this, there will remain a lot of Outlook Express clients that will not have upgraded.

Another fix is to upgrade the receiving client to Outlook 98. If you already have Office ’97, this is just a $10 shipping/media charge (as of 2/99), and we highly recommend this if you absolutely must use Outlook. Of course, Eudora 4.0 works fine, so this is another very good route, and if you don’t have Office ’97 it is a lot cheaper.

If you are concerned about other users being able to read the Email sent by the Outlook Express Client (and other Email clients), then see: How to Turn OFF HTML or RTF in Various E-mail Software Programs

We will continue to explore this issue and will update this page as we discover more information. We also intend to put a lot more tips on these kinds of interoperability issues up on netadmintools.