Problem reading TIFF file

[t***@hotmail.com]

TIFF files are being sent to me by e-mail as attachments. Sometimes
they appear as attachments and open fine. At other times they are not
attached but instead the body of the e-mail is full of lines and lines
of scrambled characters. What is the problem?

[Michael Santovec]

If the attachments are large, the may be split into multiple messages.
All message parts except the first will appear as gibberish. This is
very common with AVI, MOV, MPEG, MP3, TIFF, WAV, WMA, WMV and ZIP files.
To recreate the original, all parts must be there. For news posts in
Outlook Express (and also e-mail messages in OE5+), highlight all the
parts (hold Ctrl key while clicking each part, or use shift-click for a
range), then select Tools (OE4) or Message (OE5+) then Combine and
Decode and follow the steps. You will end up with a message window with
the decoded attachment file that you can then save, and use as desired
(File, Save Attachment).

If using OE5 and above, turn off the Preview Pane (View, Layout) to
avoid the delays with OE searching for hyperlinks. You can add a button
to the tool bar for this.

Since it's e-mail you can ask the sender not to break apart messages.
If they are using Outlook Express, the setting is in Tools, Accounts,
Mail, Properties, Advanced.

For some additional information, see:
Decoding Internet Attachments - A Tutorial
http://pages.prodigy.net/michael_santovec/decode.htm