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Outlook displays mime multipart as plaintext problem

Problem:

Outlook does not detect a mime message as such and displays the mime source code as plaintext.

After a lenghty recherche we found out that the problem was a blank name in the to: header:

To: " " <recipient@example.com>

This causes Outlook 2002 and 2003 to display the mime source code instead of interpreting it.

Test setup:

(Ubuntu Linux 12.04)

Save the following text as "test.txt":

Message-ID: <1349036242.5068a8d297a96@swift.generated>
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2012 22:17:22 +0200
Subject: Test
From: "Sender" <sender@example.com>
To: " " <recipient@example.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary="_=_swift_v4_13331004514f757fa397848_=_"

--_=_swift_v4_13331004514f757fa397848_=_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This is Text

--_=_swift_v4_13331004514f757fa397848_=_
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<html>
<head>
</head>

<body>

<h1>This is HTML</h1>

</body>
</html>

--_=_swift_v4_13331004514f757fa397848_=_--


Send it raw with the following command:

sendmail your_email@example.com < test.txt

 Now remove the blank between the quotes in the to: header, send again and it should work now.