GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 392731
Meeting requests from Outlook via Exchange displayed as unkown attachments
Last modified: 2008-08-04 04:48:15 UTC
Please describe the problem: I use Evolution to read email from an Exchange server via IMAP. Meeting invites from colleagues using Outlook appear as attachments with an unkown type, hence they cannot be accepted and added to a calendar. I first noticed this problem in version 2.8.2, downgrading to 2.8.1 resolves the issue Steps to reproduce: Open meeting invite in mailer to accept or decline invite. Actual results: Invite does not display correctly - shown as an attachment of unknown type (attachment.dat). Expected results: Display of meeting details and ability to accept or decline. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: Discused in mailing list thread: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/evolution-list/2006-December/msg00138.html
Created attachment 81756 [details] Screen shot of problem
I recently tried updating to the latest Evolution available on Fedora Core 6, version 2.8.3, and the problem still exists.
this is because outlook packs this in it's own format. Maybe the instructions at http://www.go-evolution.org/Tnef could help you.
Can anyone confirm whether this problem still exists in Evolution 2.10?
Response to comment 3 - I don't think this is a TNEF issue, this is a regression in functionality. Meeting invite attachments worked in 2.8.1, but don't work in versions >= 2.8.2. Response to comment 4 - I will upgrade to FC7 as soon as it is released, which should get me 2.10.x. How difficult would it be to rebuild the RPM from Rawhide for FC6, would I end up in dependency hell?
(In reply to comment #5) > Response to comment 4 - I will upgrade to FC7 as soon as it is released, which > should get me 2.10.x. How difficult would it be to rebuild the RPM from > Rawhide for FC6, would I end up in dependency hell? Hard to say with any certainty. I think at this point I'd recommend just waiting for FC7, or else upgrade your entire system to Rawhide. We're feature frozen now in preparation for the FC7 release, so Rawhide should be fairly stable. Upgrading piecemeal can get nasty real quick.
I think I've found the answer - if you enable the "Prefer plain-text" plugin it does what is says, displaying your messages as plain text, but it also converts all attachments to "attachment.dat". The solution for me was to disable this plugin. Attachments, including invites, are now displayed correctly. The reason that the problem didn't show up until version 2.8.2 was because this plugin did not exist in earlier versions. Given that the plugin only half works it should probably be disabled in binary distributions such as Fedora. The source is probably still useful for someone wanting to write their own plugin. If Jim can confirm that disabling this plugin resolves the issue for him then we can close this bug.
(In reply to comment #7) > The reason that the problem didn't show up until version 2.8.2 was because this > plugin did not exist in earlier versions. > > Given that the plugin only half works it should probably be disabled in binary > distributions such as Fedora. The source is probably still useful for someone > wanting to write their own plugin. That's interesting. The plugin has actually been around for ages but has always been relegated to the "experimental" plugins, which distros usually don't ship. Sometime during the 2.8 -> 2.10 development phase, the plugin was re-labeled as "standard" (presumably stable), though I'm not sure with what justification. Perhaps it's still not ready for prime-time after all. :/
(In reply to comment #7) Altought I cannot confirm whether it solves the issue for outlook invitations, I can confirm the described behavior since I recently figured that html version of mails were transformed in this attachement.dat stuff.
I can confirm this is still a problem in Evolution 2.22.2 - Meeting requests from MS-Outlook 2003 and MS-Exchange 2003 are rendered as plain text and without the calendering options. In the current Evolution we don't get an unknown attachment, instead there is no attachment at all - just the text is rendered. Turning off the "prefer plain-text" plugin immediately fixes the problem. This is weird because if I understand the function of the "prefer plain-text" plugin, then it adds a configuration option for "Mail Preferences"->"HTML Messages" called "Plain text mode" under which you can choose the "HTML mode" you want. On my configuration it used the default "prefer HTML" but still the ICS attachments were ignored. Also weird, invitations with ICS from MS-Outlook 2007 work just fine even with the "prefer plain-text" plugin enabled.
it had been fixed in bug 532384, can you please try in 2.22.2
a. this indeed looks like bug 532384, mind marking it as duplicate so we can track the issue in a single place ? b. I'm currently running with 2.22.2. I'm not sure if it includes revision 35555 discussed in the above bug, but it definitely does not have this problem fixed.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 532384 ***