59631 - Mozilla Mail can't read vCards / contacts from Outlook clients

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Erik Talvola]

Using Outlook 98 on Windows NT, if you drag a contact (from the Contacts 
folder) into an e-mail message in Outlook, you get this:

------_=_NextPart_000_01C049E0.1DC1F008
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Description: Test Smith

Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
To:
Subject: Test Smith
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 00:35:55 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)
Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset="iso-8859-1"


if you save a Contact as a vCard (from Outlook) and attach it as a file in 
sending out a message, you get:

------_=_NextPart_000_01C049E0.1DC1F008
Content-Type: application/octet-stream;
        name="Bob Smith.vcf"
Content-Disposition: attachment;
        filename="Bob Smith.vcf"

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Smith;Bob
FN:Bob Smith
NOTE:Birthday is 5/6/74
TEL;WORK;VOICE:[phone]
TEL;CELL;VOICE:[phone]
EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:[e-mail]
REV:20001109T000004Z
END:VCARD

Note that the type is set to octet-stream, and not the official MIME type of a 
vCard.  As a result, you just get an attachment on the e-mail, which if 
clicked, just generates a pop-up window saying that there is no handle for that 
MIME type.

It would be good if Mozilla mail could recognize one or both of these methods 
for adding contact information to an e-mail message, and be able to copy these 
entries into your address book.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

dup of bug 29106 ?

Comment 2

[Erik Talvola]

I don't think it's a dupe.  Bug 29106 deals with not handling the vCard format 
according to the RFCs.  This one deals with how Outlook attaches vCards into an 
e-mail message.

Comment 3

[Keyser Sose]

Reporter is this still a problem in the latest nightlies?

Comment 4

[Erik Talvola]

Yes - nothing has changed.  Build ID 2000121804

Comment 5

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW as per commments.

Comment 6

[J Luh]

This looks more like a job for Microsoft than for Mozilla--identifying
improperly labeled vCards based on content sounds like a lot of trouble. Does
this problem exist in other variants of Outlook (e.g. Outlook Express, Outlook
2000, and bug-fix releases of Outlook 98)?

Comment 7

[J Luh]

Bug 67940 suggest a possible solution to this problem (use file extension)

Comment 8

[Todd Pederzani]

On one of the mailing lists I'm on, quite a few people have vCards - I checked,
and the only ones that do display have a MIME setting of text/vCard.  Most of
the others do have application/octet-stream, but I have found an odd one with a
text/plain MIME type.

It seems that vCard support has fallen by the wayside? (unless I'm just missing it)

Comment 9

[scottputterman]

reassigning to ducarroz since I think this is in Mime code.

Comment 10

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

> On one of the mailing lists I'm on, quite a few
> people have vCards - I checked, and the only ones
> that do display have a MIME setting of text/vCard.

But note that the *correct* MIME type is 'text/directory'. See RFC 2425 (and
RFC 2426).

Comment 11

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

*** Bug 176806 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

moving some vcard foo to my list.

Comment 13

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

> It seems that vCard support has fallen by the wayside? (unless I'm just
missing it)

yes, it has.

Comment 14

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The right solution here is for mail to run application/octet-stream attachments
through the unknown content decoder to try to get a type.

Comment 15

[Len Trigg]

This bug was referenced as the mail-specific solution for bug 67940. To add some
more information here, the problem is not only with vCards -- in particular,
image attachments often have the incorrect mime type associated with them. As
such, the summary should probably be altered to reflect this.

Relevant text from my comment in the other bug:

---------------

This bug is fairly important for the average user. For example, my 
mother often gets emails containing images that have the incorrect 
content-type assigned to them. A quote from her:

"Previous to downloading Netscape 7.0, it would have automatically 
opened up the picture. Hope you have some ideas how to fix this."

(She previously used netscape 4.7 as her mail client.) Certainly 
sounds like a 4xp issue to me

Comment 16

[Erik Talvola]

I received an e-mail asking about this, and with Outlook 2003 - if you attach a vCard it shows up with the correct MIME type and Thunderbird has no problems processing it.

Not sure if it's worth spending much time on this if it is only an issue with Outlook 98 or other very old products.

Comment 17

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

WFM with based on reporter's comment 16.