Mail not displaying attachments correctly

Question

I wondered if anyone can help me out with the following please?
From time to time when receiving email attachment in mail I do not receive the attachment as a downloadable file, instead mail does not recognize the attachment and displays garbled text (See below sample).
This can happen with simple single Word files emailed to me and has happened with other file types such as PowerPoint and Jpegs. The problem is intermittent but is very irritating.
My ISP is AOL and I am running Panther on my MAC .
Incidentally my work around is to access the mail using AOL’s website and downloading the attachment from there.
Does anyone know how to resolve this issue in mail? Thanks gang.
------=_NextPart_00101C6D0F0.3C6A20F8
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_00201C6D0F0.3C6A20F8"
------=_NextPart_00201C6D0F0.3C6A20F8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Apple-Content-Length: 3151
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=iso-8859-1
------=_NextPart_00201C6D0F0.3C6A20F8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Apple-Content-Length: 9570
Content-Type: text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1
------=_NextPart_00201C6D0F0.3C6A20F8--
------=_NextPart_00101C6D0F0.3C6A20F8
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename=Compatability.doc
X-Apple-Content-Length: 235748
Content-Type: application/msword;
name=Compatability.doc
Content-Description: Compatability.doc
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
------=_NextPart_00101C6D0F0.3C6A20F8--

Answer 1

Linda,
This next line of questions, and suggestion for things to observe, should not be pursued, without some feedback, and perhaps additional info. However, if some files leftover from when Panther and Mail 1.3 was used, are present, then the index file now used in Mail 2.0/2.1 may be corrupted, and if so, it will never impact every Mac, and its Mail exactly the same way.
Since your mailboxes, or at least some of them, originated in Panther, I want you to read the article at the link below, and get back to me with some observations, before attempting any changes -- however, the problem is not usually as severe with xxxx.imapmbox folders, but can still be present:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301315
This issue of leftover files applies not only to mailboxes you have previously created (which are in the Mailboxes folder the article mentioned) but can also apply to those mailboxes in account folders created prior to the upgrade to Tiger, which will be of the form, xxxx.imapmbox.
Also, please report the size of each file or folder. Do not, however, try to list the files that are within the folder named Messages, that is found in each and every mailbox. For any On My Mac mailboxes, it is very important to compare the size of any file named "mbox" with that of the Messages folder. If the mbox is greater in size than the Messages folder, then not all messages have been converted to be in the Messages folder. Also, if any xxxx.mbox folder has more than one folder with Messages in its name, things are not what they should be.
The path to the Mail folder is Home/Library/Mail -- within the Mail folder are one or more account folders and the Mailboxes folder. Even though you are using IMAP, other mailboxes (On My Mac or POP) might still corrupt the Envelope Index that Mail 2.x now uses instead of separate index files in each mailbox.
Ernie