There has been a rise in instances (10-20 members) where the invoices being received from the association billing departments are being received with .dat files attached rather than .pdf

We recognize that you probably don't care about the why's of the issue - but to be clear this is an issue on the email client end of things where mostly Microsoft Email Clients (Mail, Outlook etc.) are changing the file extension from the original .pdf format.

We recommend checking for updates to your operating system, email client and security software if you are encountering these issues.

The workaround for this issue is to save the file to your computer and then right click on the file, select properties and on the box that pops up where the file name is simply remove the .dat and put in .pdf and press ok or save Once the file extension has been changed back to .pdf you will be able to view it normally. Some members have reported that simply saving it locally and then selecting open with Adobe Reader has worked without changing the file extension.

Here is the step by step process to rename the file:

  1. Save the file to your computer (make note of where you saved it and it's name)
  2. Navigate to the file and right click on the file icon or file name and select Properties
  3. Edit the file extension from .dat to .pdf (if you do not see the .dat or .pdf portion of the name see additional steps below on enabling the viewing of file extensions) and click OK, a window will pop up with a warning about changing a file extension - Click Yes
     
  4. Double click on your file to open as you normally would.


Additional steps to enable viewing of file extensions (if required)

  1. in your document explorer window click View on the the top menu and look for a checkbox with the label "File Name Extensions" and make sure there is a check mark beside it as illustrated below, once the check mark is there you can begin the steps above to rename your file.