If your incoming email to incident emerges with file attachments and missing images, it's likely that your dealing with a pesky file type known as winmail.dat. When support inquiries arrive by email, they are redirected to the Activity Log section. If the email is generated by Microsoft Exchange or Outlook, embedded images can show up as non-viewable winmail.dat attachments instead. Or, you can end up with an empty Incident record and your clingy winmail.dat friend. This is because Microsoft Exchange is sending the email in Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF), which ServiceNow does not recognize. However, this only happens if the contact for your ServiceNow instance's email address is in Exchange and configured to use MAPI rich text format (RTF).
To avoid this, administrators should reconfigure the Exchange server to not send RTF data to ServiceNow instances.
How to prevent winmail.dat attachments in your emails to incidents:
1. Log in to your Exchange Server by opening the Exchange Management Console (EMC).
2. Open Microsoft Exchange On-Premise.
3. Open Recipient Configuration.
4. Select Mail Contact.
5. Find the contact for your ServiceNow instance email (the one that sends emails to <instancename>@service-now.com).
6. Open the <Contact Name>.
7. Select General.
8. In the Use MAPI rich text format field, select Never.
9. Click OK.
For more information, see: Email to incidents come in as winmail.dat
For information about adding images in emails, see Adding Images to Email Notifications.
See how other community users solved their winmail.dat attachment issues:
winmail.dat attachment being created on email inbound action in Production instance
