[ale] Forcing Outlook to do plain text was Ale Digest, Vol 15, Issue 89

[krwatson at cc.gatech.edu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
> Kinney
> Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:10
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> Subject: Re: [ale] Ale Digest, Vol 15, Issue 89
> 
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 9:59 AM,  <krwatson at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'll share the hack with whoever is interested. I would assume offline
> as this is a Linux list.
> >
> > keith
> >
> 
> Please publish the hack ONLINE as pointing out the failings of other
> operating systems methods both supports the cause of expanding Linux
> use but is also just plain fun.
> 
> BTW: the web version of outlook stinks even worse than the client
> version. They managed to "fix" it so unless you use IE7 ON A MICROSOFT
> PLATFORM you have limited abilities (no task list, no automatic update
> of incoming email, etc).
> 
> SquirrelMail is totally awesome when compared to Outlook web.
> 
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness


OK as promised here is how to set Outlook to really do plain text. I have only tested this on Outlook 2003. It is a per user change so you will have to apply it separately for each user account on the system. 

 1. Start Outlook
 2. Click the menu Tools > Options
 3. Select the Mail Format tab
 4. Set "Compose in this message format" to "Plain Text"
 5. Select Preferences tab
 6. Click the "E-Mail Options" button
 7. Disable "Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages"
 8. Enable "Read all standard mail in plain text"
 9. Enable "Read all digitally signed mail in plain text"
10. Click the OK button
11. Quit Outlook
12. Apply the following registry change (if you cut and paste the following text to a file you can use regini.exe to apply the change)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
    ReadAsPlain = REG_DWORD 0x00000001


13. Start Outlook and enjoy plain text


The down side to this fix is that HTML emails will now display as plain text however you can override this behavior on a per message basis and view them as HTML.

On the top of an HTML email above the From field will be the following message: "This message was converted to plain text." Right click this message and select "Display as HTML."

Embedded images will be displayed however, if the message contains references to images they will remain broken and the message above the From field will change to the following: "Click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of some pictures in this message." To view the images right click this message and select "Download Pictures".

After you enable HTML and images you will get the following notice when you close the email. "Do you want to save changes?" From what I can tell it really doesn't matter if you select Yes or No. I always select No.

If you get an HTML email and want to respond with text only simply reply to the message as usual. However, if you want to maintain the HTML formatting and respond in HTML simply display the email as HTML and then your reply will also be in HTML.

Forcing Windows to work the way you want it since version 1.0,
keith

-- 

Keith R. Watson                        Georgia Institute of Technology
Systems Support Specialist IV          College of Computing
keith.watson at cc.gatech.edu             801 Atlantic Drive NW
(404) 385-7401                         Atlanta, GA  30332-0280