Retrieving Attachments That Are Embedded Into an Email Message

Sometimes you may receive an email that has got an attachment embedded into the email itself as opposed to having the attachment sent as a separate file. To retrieve the embedded information, you need to what's called "uudecode" your email. This can be done in a number of ways. Two ways will be explained here; one using Mulberry to extract it, the other using a Unix command.

Mulberry

When you read an email and it looks like the picture below, you need to open the email in its own window before doing anything more. To do this, double click the email within the INBOX of Mulberry.

To extract the attachment, go to the the Message menu, then Decode Embedded, then choose UU. Mulberry will then ask you where you want to save the attachment. Choose a location and press the Save button. You can now open the attachment as normal.

Unix Command

It doesn't matter what email reading program you use, you first need to save the email to a file on the Unix network. This should be on your N: drive. Using Exceed or PuTTy, navigate to the directory where you stored the email. Type in

uudecode filename

The attachment will now be in the same current directory. Locate it (TIP: You might want to read the email to find the filename of the attachment. This can be found after the words 'begin 600'). Open this new file as usual.