C:\ONGRTLNS.IPN

I got an e-mail yesterday on my iPhone from Dan Miller, the executive editor of Macworld’s print magazine. As you might expect, we pass around a lot of files at Macworld. Our print manuscripts are in Microsoft Word format. (Although to be honest I write most of my stories in BBEdit — one of these days we’re going to eliminate Word from our process, somehow.) Our magazine layout previews are in PDF.

So I was excited to get a real, live Macworld manuscript on my iPhone. What better way to explot its file-viewing prowess than by reading a Word file?

No dice.

It turns out that the iPhone is very particular about what files it will open. Dan, being a Mac user of the old school, doesn’t find it necessary to add “.doc” to every file he sends. So he sent me a file with the title “24.10 Security.” (That’s volume 24, issue 10 of Macworld: the October 2007 issue.) My iPhone refused to open it, and displayed it as a generic file attachment (see the top image to the left).

When I got home, I decided to investigate the issue. I renamed the file “24-10 Security.doc” and sent it to myself. Sure enough, that one came through with flying colors (see the bottom image to the left). And I could read it when I tapped on it — although not until the iPhone took quite some time to munch on the 88K file.

So be warned: if you’re an iPhone user, you’re going to need to tell your friends to always name the files they send you with extensions, or the phone simply won’t understand what to do with it. Even plain text files, which should be easy to understand, aren’t available for tapping unless followed by a “.txt” extension.

Go figure.

Category: Tips & Troubleshooting

Posted by Jason Snell on Jul 10 2007, 3:03 PM ET

Comments (8)

even though i've been a mac user for over 20 years, i made myself get into the extension habit long ago. i think it's a good habit to have, and i'm glad when i see it pay off, like in this case. i'll be danged if i can get my mac-using friends to get used to doing it, though -- it's like a mark of pride or something to not use 'em. well, maybe this will help change that.

personally, i would love to be able to SAVE the docs i receive via email somewhere on my iphone for future reference, and i can't figure out how to do that. any clue? i thought that iphoto used to handle PDF files, so that would be a workaround, but i heard that didn't work any more, so maybe apple broke it on purpose at some point.

Posted by franko | July 10, 2007 3:18 PM

And worse, the phone goes a long way toward trusting the .doc extension. (Although my test didn't seem to crash the phone.)

I took a netgear.cfg file I had lying around, and renamed a copy of it to netgear.doc. I then sent that to my phone as an attachment.

Rather than fireworks, I simply get a blank (white) screen (below the title bar or whatever that is at the top with file name and the left arrow named Message). Other non-Word .doc files might do more damage...this one is seemingly benign.

(One of the very early Windows viruses spread because Outlook Express, when it received an audio sort of MIME part whose file had a .exe extension thought to itself: "This is a sound file, I guess to play it I should execute it." (Windows Eudora put up an alert about the improper file and--at least--asked what to do.)

Posted by John Baxter | July 10, 2007 3:39 PM

Yes, I'm a little disappointed that the iPhone isn't looking at the file to confirm what file type it really is.

Posted by Jason Snell | July 10, 2007 3:49 PM

"Yes, I'm a little disappointed that the iPhone isn't looking at the file to confirm what file type it really is."

On the plus side, Jason, that is a nice C:/ prompt you've got there. So it all evens out in the end.

Posted by Kate Marshall | July 10, 2007 7:32 PM

Perhaps I should have made my reference more explicit.

Posted by Jason Snell | July 10, 2007 7:45 PM

@Jason: Cute.

Posted by Kate Marshall | July 11, 2007 6:01 AM

Wow, that is good to know. You guys can just figure out all the solutions to my iPhone problems and let me know about 'em ok?

Posted by David | July 11, 2007 2:26 PM

within my first 2 days of iPhone ownership I have 2 emailed mp3s that I cannot open and 4 SMS photo attachments that I can't view. What kind of multimedia device is this? Am I the only one that thinks this is bizarre? Or is it just my phone?

Posted by debbi | July 14, 2007 2:00 AM

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