LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Pullin <andrew@hotspurbgc.com.au>
  To  : <dmdeflui@subcorp.com.au>
  Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 11:56:57 +1000

HTML Mail & Outlook Express

RE: Newbie Samba GuideDear Desiree,
    Not wishing you any malice or wishing someone else to
start a flame war about HTML mail with you that will choke
up the list again, and for anyone else using outlook express
and who might not have realised.....


>(PS If this comes out HTML embedded blame my manager, >the
network administrator, the firewall, the IS0 9001
>requirements, the company's ISP, John Howard, Mike Rann,
>John Bannon, Santa Clause, Fred Niles, Reverend Fred
>Nutter, the Easter Bunny, Bruce Ruxton (added for Anzac
>Day), the Chaos Theory and of course lets not forget
>Pauline Hanson..., because I did not send it HTML
>embedded - unless Outlook 97 does that for me!!!!)

    Yes...Outlook WILL send HTML mail (or Rich Text Format
to be slightly more correct) without you knowing it or it
being obvious and Yes your message got to me as HTML mail
(which probably means everyone on the list got it that way).
Here is how to check and turn it off.

    1. Go to Tools Menu and select Options
    2. Go to Send Tab
    3. Set Mail Sending Format and select Plain Text
    4. Click Apply.

    This should turn off HTML mail. Often large companies
and organisations have a default setup for all of their PCs
which is the way the tech who set it up usually likes his
own PC setup for mundane things like e-mail, unless their is
a specific company policy (which for HTML or Plain Text
e-mail there rarely is). Usually what happens is the tech
sets up the machine the way he/she likes it with all of the
basic stuff all employees will get and then they make a
snapshot of the hard drive and use it to set up every PC in
the company. That way all the company PCs start out the
same. The theory is that 90% of users don't bother to change
their basic settings because they don't know how or don't
care and so Tech support only have to support the 10% of
users who cause most of the problems. I suspect probably all
your companies PCs have this _feature_ of HTML mail turned
on.

    I haven't checked, but this should turn all signature
files and company disclaimers to Plain Text also, so after
this, if you are still sending HTML mail, then it isn't
Outlook that is doing it. You will find that if you recieve
HTML mail and Reply to it, it WILL keep the formatting and
not convert it so you will need to click on Format on the
message reply box and manually switch it to Plain Text as I
had to do with this message. It will give you a "are you
sure box" and say you might lose information, but the only
info you will lose is the HTML formatting. I hope this
solves your problem.
    Cheers!
        Andrew.

P.S. Personally I blame the "Santa Clause" in your Companies
IT Policy for all these problems. :-)

-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/  IRC: #linuxsa on irc.linux.org.au
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject