"flipper" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 4 May 2008 09:21:50 -0500, "Dave" wrote:

snip

Would have helped if you had posted the file name but I presume you
mean this one.

"Maps Of The World - Time Zones.pdf" yEnc

The yEnc on the end of the name explains it. It was posted using the
yEnc protocol and, as I think I mentioned in one of the earlier posts,
Outlook Express knows nothing about yEnc.

As mentioned before, USENET was originally intended for text only and
some 'tricks' have to be played to get binaries into a form that looks
like text. The original means to do so was uuencode (basically, it
chops up 8 bit bytes and maps the pieces to an ASCII character.
Decoding is the reverse), which Outlook supports. Outlook also
supports MIME. YEnc is a newer method that is more efficient than
uuencode, which is why it's become rather popular, and almost
everything supports it except, of course, Outlook Express.

There's a 3'rd party 'run time' decoder for Outlook Express that used
to be free and now costs money but I don't see a really good reason
for burning cash just to make OE an only slightly less crappy binary
reader, especially when Xnews is free.

http://xnews.newsguy.com/

I don't use that one (I use Forte Agent, which isn't freeware) but
hear it's not the most user friendly... but then, it costs nothing to
try and gets the job done. If you don't like it, nuke it and no skin
lost.

If you're inextricably married to Outlook Express there's still a
(free) way to do it and that's to "combine and decode" like you would
a 'normal' message set except "save as" TEXT to disk. In other words,
you save it 'just as it is' (text) in the (combined) messages with NO
decoding (because OE will screw it up if allowed to attempt the
decode). Then use this thing

http://www.yenc32.com/oeusers.php

to decode the file full of binary gibberish text you just saved. The
decoder will create a second file that's 'the real thing' and, when
it's done, you can delete the binary gibberish text file.

Or use OE for text, if you like it, and Xnews for just the binaries.


I found the quickest way to use OE and Yenc32 is to drag and drop the
downloaded OE messages in to a Yenc32 decode directory. Then select all the
save files and use the Yenc32 right click menu item to decode them. The
decoder can handle nws files fine, no need to make them text. the Set up
options of Yenc32 can delete the original files automatically on a
successful decode.

Wes.