how do I change the default mail format for message replies?

[JeffMonnee]

Hoping the rage babies have gone to bed now.

Is there any way I can set ALL my messages, regardless of their status as
reply, forward or new message, to be formatted in RichTextFormatting?

It's becoming annoying to see all my mails get reverted back to plaintext.
It's so bloody ugly

 

[Gordon]

Hoping the rage babies have gone to bed now.

Is there any way I can set ALL my messages, regardless of their status as
reply, forward or new message, to be formatted in RichTextFormatting?

It's becoming annoying to see all my mails get reverted back to plaintext.
It's so bloody ugly

Do you not understand? First, NON-Outlook users will NOT be able to access
any attachments sent in Rich Text.
Secondly, it is extraordinarily inconsiderate, if not downright arrogant,
to reply to an email in a different format from that in which it was sent.
There are still large numbers of people in existence who a) don't use
Outlook and b) only want plain text on their machines.

 

[Bob I]

Given the criteria you set down? No, you can't.

Hoping the rage babies have gone to bed now.

Is there any way I can set ALL my messages, regardless of their status as
reply, forward or new message, to be formatted in RichTextFormatting?

It's becoming annoying to see all my mails get reverted back to plaintext.
It's so bloody ugly



:

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Is there any way I can set ALL my messages, regardless of their status as
reply, forward or new message, to be formatted in RichTextFormatting?

No.

 

[dmoney]

Here's what i did to alleviate this, although it might not work in every
situation.

I went to C:\documents and settings\"username"\application
data\microsoft\signatures

I then opened the rich text version of the signature and edited it to make
it look the way i wanted. I couldn't find a way to change the default mail
format for replies in outlook. This was good enough for my situation, since i
was only being affected by users emailing with the rich text format. This
might not work if you have graphics or other things, but it's worth a shot.

Can no one recommend an add-in to fix this, or some other solution? You two
bickering about the reason you don't have this option/why you should is
certainly not helping. Anyone can click the right places (manually) to
convert the message back to HTML, then switch to a font that isn't horrible ,
then re-paste in a nice signature, but certainly there must be a
better/faster/2007 solution. Anyone?

I would like to kindly point out that you have attacked your customer
base when they are turning to you in frustration for answers - and
when they are giving Microsoft wonderful opportunities to listen for
future upgrades to Outlook to meet the customers' needs.

You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that I have a "customer base"
and work for Microsoft.

This is my first exposure to your customer service level and your personal
work
ethic.

You can imply nothing about my work ethic by what I post here. I don't get
paid to post here.

The specific responses that will be linked with your name
"Brian Tillman" and Microsoft are-- calling the customer
"untrainable" and then responding that "no one here will care if the
customer (and therefore all customers) switch to Mac" when the
customer was offended by your "untrainable" remark.

You seem to be reading messages I never posted. Nowhere did I state anyone
was untrainable. Did you even see the question mark in the sentence? I was
asking if the person considered himself untrainable. I had said it is easy
to train oneself to make choices allowed by the software and the person
responded that he disagreed that it was easy to train himself. Ergo, he
must consider himself untrainable, but I decided I had to ask. I don't make
assumptions about people, unlike, apparently, you.

In the future, I
would like to suggest that you keep in mind that you do not represent
your own opinions and that you are a representative of a company and
their brand.

Wrong. Everything I post here is my own opinion. Perhaps you don't
understand what newsgroups are. They're peer-to-peer venues. While
Microsoft employees do occasionally post here, you'll always see "[MSFT]"
after their names. Most of the rest of us are just people who use Outlook
every day.

 

[lworth02]

Please, has anyone ever found a solution? All the extra mousing and/or
keystrokes are painful, but I am in an organization and need my signature
(among other things) not to be in plain text...thank you.

Can no one recommend an add-in to fix this, or some other solution? You two
bickering about the reason you don't have this option/why you should is
certainly not helping. Anyone can click the right places (manually) to
convert the message back to HTML, then switch to a font that isn't horrible ,
then re-paste in a nice signature, but certainly there must be a
better/faster/2007 solution. Anyone?

I would like to kindly point out that you have attacked your customer
base when they are turning to you in frustration for answers - and
when they are giving Microsoft wonderful opportunities to listen for
future upgrades to Outlook to meet the customers' needs.

You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that I have a "customer base"
and work for Microsoft.

This is my first exposure to your customer service level and your personal
work
ethic.

You can imply nothing about my work ethic by what I post here. I don't get
paid to post here.

The specific responses that will be linked with your name
"Brian Tillman" and Microsoft are-- calling the customer
"untrainable" and then responding that "no one here will care if the
customer (and therefore all customers) switch to Mac" when the
customer was offended by your "untrainable" remark.

You seem to be reading messages I never posted. Nowhere did I state anyone
was untrainable. Did you even see the question mark in the sentence? I was
asking if the person considered himself untrainable. I had said it is easy
to train oneself to make choices allowed by the software and the person
responded that he disagreed that it was easy to train himself. Ergo, he
must consider himself untrainable, but I decided I had to ask. I don't make
assumptions about people, unlike, apparently, you.

In the future, I
would like to suggest that you keep in mind that you do not represent
your own opinions and that you are a representative of a company and
their brand.

Wrong. Everything I post here is my own opinion. Perhaps you don't
understand what newsgroups are. They're peer-to-peer venues. While
Microsoft employees do occasionally post here, you'll always see "[MSFT]"
after their names. Most of the rest of us are just people who use Outlook
every day.

 

[Ted Heise]

Yes, that helps a lot. It essentially mimics the behavior of Outlook 2003
for plain text as an across the board format (i.e., including replies).

The problem with individually reformatting replies to messages in html
(aside from the inconvenience), is that any configured quote string (e.g.,
the traditional "> ") is not inserted at the left of the quoted reply. This
can caue a lot of confusion on attribution in lengthy exchanges.

Lionizer, if you are still following this thread, you should give this
method a try. It does what you want, assuming you don't mind viewing *all*
messages in plain text by default.

 

[Tim]

Any news on this? I agree with JOSHUABEIJING; in that I start a conversation
in HTML, and when I reply to a reply, my originally perfect signature and
default set-up is displayed in Rich Text.

So while I agree with Brian that this could be fixed on a case by case
event, it would be easier to do through a generic setting. Perhaps the
signature settings where one can choose the output based on a 'New' or
'Reply/Forward' status of the email, could be replicated for email format for
'New' or 'Reply/Forward'.

Is this a current setting?
Dare I ask, is there a hack?

Thanks.

Can no one recommend an add-in to fix this, or some other solution? You two
bickering about the reason you don't have this option/why you should is
certainly not helping. Anyone can click the right places (manually) to
convert the message back to HTML, then switch to a font that isn't horrible ,
then re-paste in a nice signature, but certainly there must be a
better/faster/2007 solution. Anyone?

I would like to kindly point out that you have attacked your customer
base when they are turning to you in frustration for answers - and
when they are giving Microsoft wonderful opportunities to listen for
future upgrades to Outlook to meet the customers' needs.

You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that I have a "customer base"
and work for Microsoft.

This is my first exposure to your customer service level and your personal
work
ethic.

You can imply nothing about my work ethic by what I post here. I don't get
paid to post here.

The specific responses that will be linked with your name
"Brian Tillman" and Microsoft are-- calling the customer
"untrainable" and then responding that "no one here will care if the
customer (and therefore all customers) switch to Mac" when the
customer was offended by your "untrainable" remark.

You seem to be reading messages I never posted. Nowhere did I state anyone
was untrainable. Did you even see the question mark in the sentence? I was
asking if the person considered himself untrainable. I had said it is easy
to train oneself to make choices allowed by the software and the person
responded that he disagreed that it was easy to train himself. Ergo, he
must consider himself untrainable, but I decided I had to ask. I don't make
assumptions about people, unlike, apparently, you.

In the future, I
would like to suggest that you keep in mind that you do not represent
your own opinions and that you are a representative of a company and
their brand.

Wrong. Everything I post here is my own opinion. Perhaps you don't
understand what newsgroups are. They're peer-to-peer venues. While
Microsoft employees do occasionally post here, you'll always see "[MSFT]"
after their names. Most of the rest of us are just people who use Outlook
every day.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Any news on this? I agree with JOSHUABEIJING; in that I start a
conversation
in HTML, and when I reply to a reply, my originally perfect signature
and
default set-up is displayed in Rich Text.

So while I agree with Brian that this could be fixed on a case by case
event, it would be easier to do through a generic setting. Perhaps the
signature settings where one can choose the output based on a 'New' or
'Reply/Forward' status of the email, could be replicated for email
format for
'New' or 'Reply/Forward'.

Is this a current setting?
Dare I ask, is there a hack?

There is no way to force Outlook to automatically choose a reply format
that differs from the format of the message to which you're replying,
with one exception. You can tell Outlook to reply to a particular
person using a particular format, but the message will be converted at
send time, not on your screen. Other than that, you'll have to manually
force the selection.

 

[Nick London]

The main reason I found this thread was because, internally in my
organisation, half the staff default to RTF and half to HTML. My signature is
set up in HTML. So if I hit "reply" to an RTF message, my HTML signature
looks rubbish.

Rather than change the format of the message, I have found that going to
this location (WinXP machine, Outlook 2007):

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

and changing the RTF signature files to match my HTML signature files does
what I need it to do, as suggested by someone further along in this thread.

I find the whole "don't be rude and change the format of the mail message"
conversation to be quite amusing: some of it almost verging on zealotry. If A
sends B something in plain text, but B wants HTML, is that rude of A to use
plain text? Apparently not.
But if B changes it to HTML to send the reply, apparently it is rude of B to
do so because A wants plain text. Even though most mail readers I've used (on
a variety of platforms) have an option for converting all incoming messages
to plain text... And I have that setting configured on a number of the
machines I use for responses that come from people I don't know.

Cheers
Nick

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

Rather than change the format of the message, I have found that going to
this location (WinXP machine, Outlook 2007):

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

and changing the RTF signature files to match my HTML signature files does
what I need it to do, as suggested by someone further along in this thread.

That's what I do as well. I make sure my variously formatted signatures files
explicitly contain what I want.

I find the whole "don't be rude and change the format of the mail message"
conversation to be quite amusing: some of it almost verging on zealotry. If
A
sends B something in plain text, but B wants HTML, is that rude of A to use
plain text? Apparently not.

Since A initiated the message, A has no way of knowing what B can accept, so
it's not "rude" to use Plian Text even though B can accept (and maybe prefers)
HTML. A simply can't know what B would like. B, however, clearly knows what
A would like because B received a clear indication of it.

That said, I think you're correct. Some of the posters seem a little
fanatical about it. It's similar to the "top- or bottom-post" debate, more
religious than substantive.

 

[Braino]

Manually, on each message as you reply. Outlook does not support changing it
via an option because it's rude to change the format on replies - if the
sender uses a specific format, it's very likely they have a reason, such as
they don't like the larger message sizes of HTML (if they pay by the minute,
such as when using a cell phone modem) or they use a client that can't
handle HTML.



--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)
Author, Google and Other Search Engines (Visual QuickStart Guide)



Join OneNote Tips mailing list: http://www.onenote-tips.net/

I know how to change the format of individual replies. How can I change
the
default mail format to HTML for all replies?

 

[Brainball]

I agree with everyone that wants to send, reply, receive, and/or foward a
message in the format of choice. I get text but I want to send html,
rich-text or whatever. This would be a great help.

 

[Bob I]

Then you would need to Open, Edit and change it.

 

[Gordon]

I agree with everyone that wants to send, reply, receive, and/or foward a
message in the format of choice. I get text but I want to send html,
rich-text or whatever. This would be a great help.

Do you not think it's a touch arrogant to reply in a different format to the
mail you have received?

 

[Bob I]

Do you not think it's a touch arrogant to reply in a different format to
the mail you have received?

This is a self solving issue. He receives text, replies in RTF, his
reply gets flushed by the recipient.

 

[William]

it sucks, that there in not an option....Groupwise would do it..

 

[Gordon]

it sucks, that there in not an option....Groupwise would do it..

And do you not think it grossly arrogant to reply in a different format to
the one that was sent to you?

 

[FusionProd]

Brian,

Regardless of whether or not you are paid to be here, the point of
discussion boards and forums such as this is to offer input, advice, and
helpful solutions to people who come here in search of answers to specific
problems.

Such input is to be given in a professional, courteous manner - as you would
expect someone to answer you. Your comments in this discussion thread are
demeaning and rude.

If this is the manner in which you conduct yourself in discussion forums,
than I think you are missing the point.

Whether or not you work for Microsoft, your curt replies in this post have
certainly put a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

Your comments in this discussion thread are demeaning and rude.

Since when is it rude to tell someone neither I nor anyone else will care if
they use a Mac? Sorry if the truth offends you.

Why are you commenting on a thread that's already gone from most servers? The
last time I posted in this thread was February 26 and it was certainly not the
message you decided to quote. Selecting only what you want to see is a
self-fulfilling prophesy..

Whether or not you work for Microsoft, your curt replies in this post have
certainly put a bad taste in my mouth.

So, killfile me. I won't care about that, either. Sorry if that offends you.