E-mail attachments I send arrive as garbled unreadable e-mails

Question

This seems to happen randomly with messages I send whether I use Entourage of Mail. My attachments sometimes go through and sometimes they don't. They become unattached and the recepient receives this message:
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.
--B32300431951484520
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
The e-mail body message I write appears here... followed by what you see below.
--B32300431951484520
Content-type: application/msword; name="Smart Borrower Spanish.doc";
x-mac-creator="4D535744";
x-mac-type="5738424E"
Content-disposition: attachment
Content-transfer-encoding: base64
0M8R4KGxGuEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPgADAP7/CQAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAiAAAAAAA
AAAAEAAAigAAAAEAAAD+////AAAAAIYAAACHAAAA///////
And the garble continues.
My mail server is bellsouth.net a POP server. Bellsouth says every thing from their end is fine. Also checked with Microsoft and they say it's a server issue. In the meantime I'm stuck in the middle.
I did find in your discussion groups someone having a similar problem with an IMAP mail server, but no solution was given.
My clients are getting frustrated too because I continue sending worthless files.
Please help!!! I invested too much $$$ on this computer and programs to be having problems like this.
Im desperate!!!
Tanya
ibook power pc g4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Mail server: bellsouth (POP server)

Answer 1

Hi Tanya, it is rather strange that even a simple word docu attachment would create such a problem.
By "right", even if you just started using either MS Entourage or Apple Mail fresh, and did not go deep in to reconfigure anything... the attachment like this "should" get through to "most of the computers", Mac or PC wise.
Let me raise an example of my personal work experience regarding using Mail's "Send PC Windows Friendly Attachments" and when you may need to turn on or off this feature.
In my company's cable media line, I need to send Jpeg images as "Still On Air" slide to our On-air Presentation Suite (where all the channels, beaming etc are) to put up say, a "Breakdown Slide", all of them use PCs; If I need to send them this Jpeg file, extension aside, which we all agree is by now a standard protocol whether it's sending to a Mac and/or PC, if I turn on Mail's Windows Friendly feature, this Jpeg image file will be "embedded" into my email, and they will have no way to extracting it out as a Jpeg image file to put to use, I have to turn that feature off so the image file is like a regular attachment that goes through.
So as for your case, maybe part of the reason, you may want to check with your ISP, and also the companies you are sending email to, whether their company servers have any form of various of different filter system or standards; Let me take any example, we sometimes also send Targa image files, (.tga) which is for on-air Channel Bug (the channel logo you see on the corners of the TV screens), and this Targa file has a alpha or matte channel; But somehow our own company's servers "hates" targa files and will filter them off, treating them like junk!
So the solution is to compress the file, zip it and it will go through.
So maybe you want to "experiment" and zip the file and see whether it will go through nicely.
Mac OS X has its own Compression feature built-in, so you don't really need DropStuff or anykind, highlight the file and right-click, select "Create Archive of xxx" (being the name of the file, or folder) and then you go, a zip file will be created.
Cheers