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Sending Plain Text E-mail Messages

Outlook Express 5.0 - 6.0

• Select "Tools" then click on "Options..."
• Click on "Send" tab
• In the "Mail Sending Format" and "News Sending Format" sections, click on "Plain Text" bullet in both places
• In the "Mail Sending Format" section, click on "Plain Text Settings..." button.
• In the "Plain Text Settings" window and the Message format section
  • Click MIME bullet
  • Set "Encode text using:" to None.
  • Uncheck the "Allow 8-bit characters in headers"
  • Set Automatically wrap text at 72
  • Check the box in front of "Indent the original text with > when replying or forwarding"
  • Click OK
• In the "News Sending Format" section, click on "Plain Text Settings..." button.
• In the "Plain Text Settings" window and the Message format section
  • Click MIME bullet
  • Set "Encode text using:" to None.
  • Uncheck the "Allow 8-bit characters in headers"
  • Set Automatically wrap text at 72
  • Check the box in front of "Indent the original text with > when replying or forwarding"
  • Click OK
• While still in the "Send" tab, Uncheck "Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent"
• Click on "Apply" and then on "OK".

NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that Outlook Express occasionally breaks all lines at the set margin after you send an e-mail message on a reply or forward. So the lines Outlook Express marks with "> " get wrapped after the "> " mark and the recipeient gets something awful to look at and entirely different than what it looked like before you sent it.

To prevent this from happening, you may want to set the margin at 132 (maximum possible value) and break the lines at 72 to 75 characters manually.

All of your messages will now be sent as plain text. Outlook Express can also be configured to send Business Cards (also referred to as vCards) with your e-mail. These are attachments, which show up as strings of unreadable code on most mailing lists. To turn these off:

• Select "Tools" then click on "Options..."
• Click on "Compose" tab
• In the "Business Cards" area, uncheck the check boxes in front of Mail and News for "Include my business card when creating new messages."
• Click on "Apply" and then on "OK".

 

Original material courtesy of Gerald E. Boyd.