Re. MIME format and message attachments?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Kari Gulbrandsen reports a file transfer problem: <<I am trying to do the
newsletter (pro bono) for my daughter's school.  The person who has been
doing it, sent me a template.  But I can't figure out how to open it.  He is
using Windows, I am using a Mac.  And I download everything to my desktop
through Outlook Express.  when i double-click on the file, i
get the msg that it can't be opened because the application program that
created it can't be found.>>

Don't double-click the file. Click once to select it, then choose "Save as"
to put it somewhere on your hard disk. Then open it in the appropriate
application. The problem is most likely due to the fact that it's a file
type you haven't registered with the Mac as being associated with a specific
application. The application knows better what it can open than the
operating system does. If the file has indeed been compressed somehow and
wasn't automatically decompressed when you received it, you have a variety
of options; the simplest is likely to involve getting a copy of StuffIt
Expander, which can handle most compression formats (though if you do a lot
of this, buying the full StuffIt Deluxe package would be worthwhile). To
find other decompression utilities, head over to www.tucows.com and search
through their Mac archives. Lots of good stuff there.

--Geoff Hart, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca 
"The paperless office will arrive when the paperless toilet
arrives."--Matthew Stevens