Email Clients
These are just some notes on various email clients.
MS Outlook
By default, MS Outlook 98 (8.5.5104.6) sends new email in rtf
format.
(Great idea, send all new content in the proprietary Microsoft
Rich Text Format. What a load of ...)
This can be fixed by selecting Tools / Options... / Mail Format
and setting Message format to Plain Text.
(Never, ever, send email in anything other than plain text. Ever.)
I found this "feature" because I was sending an email.
A client wanted my address and I simply copied it from a web
page (created specifically for this purpose) and pasted
it into MS Outlook.
What a mess. A simple multiline address was pasted
on a single line in large bold letters.
Well, I changed the font and re-entered the line breaks.
However, the address was now double spaced.
After 30 minutes of trying everything, I gave up and asked for
help.
That's how I learned about the Plain Text option.
It turns out that Edit / Paste Special...
allows you to paste only the text.
It is interesting that there is no way to convert an existing
message into plain text.
Also, the help does not contain entries for "double spacing",
"line spacing", or "spacing".
The Help window stays on top of all other windows.
Thus, if you switch to another application,
you must first close (not hide or minimize) the Outlook
help window.
AOL
I have been told that
AOL 6.0 only sends email in the HTML format and there is no option to turn that feature off.
I tested AOL 7.0 with email sent from MS Outlook 98.
All 4 formats (text, html, rtf, ms word)
were read sucessfully.
However, in each case (except straight text),
I changed one word to bold before sending the email,
but that highlighting was not displayed in AOL 7.0.
AOL 6 & 7 both have the ability to display html email.
webmaster.info.aol.com
explains why html email is sometimes displayed as text
and indicates which html tags are ignored
(mostly do to security issues).
Format HTML Email for AOL
provides some additional data.
Author: Robert Clemenzi -
clemenzi@cpcug.org