An "external viewer" is used to display some mime type that is not display-able by pine/elm/mime* . These are such things as various audio and motion-video formats, etc. You generally see these viewers working with a WWW browser, but they are just as valid for e-mail. Bruce -- Pixar's "Toy Story", at greater than $184,200,000 in domestic box office receipts, is the #1 movie released in 1995!