Receive Text Only Emails

[AlexG]

Hello! I'm looking for a way to tell Outlook that I only want to receive text based emails. I already found the settings to convert to plain text (Trust Center > E-mail Security > Read all standard mail in plain text), but that's not what I'm after.

We have an e-mail communication tool here that allows us to send email blasts to our customers, and the system sends both an HTML version of the message and a text only version. It seems to be that based on what your email client can support, you get one message or the other. Our workstations all get the HTML version and smartphones and tablets we test on get the text only version.

We want a way to be able to test the text version and ensure the copy is all correct before we send the live version, without having to use someone's cell phone. Using "Read all standard mail in plain text" converts the HTML message to text, but it's still viewing the incorrect version. What I really want is for Outlook to report to the mail server, "I'm incapable of receiving the HTML version, so please send me the text only." Is there a way I can do this? Or is that a determination that happens further up the line, when the mailing software interfaces with MDaemon to get our e-mail addresses?

Thanks in advance!

 

[devott]

I have a related question. But first I will answer Alex to help clarify what is happening.

Alex,
When you say "the system sends both an HTML version of the message and a text only version. It seems to be that based on what your email client can support, you get one message or the other."

It's actually a SINGLE message which contains both the plain text and HTML components within it. In simple terms, the message package contains the headers followed by a boundary, the plain text version, a boundary again, then the HTML version and final boundary. The email reading program then displays the appropriate one depending on the user's settings. A plain text only message contains only the headers and plain text content (no boundaries needed).

The problem, as you discovered, is that Outlook is displaying a plain text version which it fabricates from the HTML ("converted from HTML"), instead of displaying the already-included plain text version. I can understand why - they are attempting to compensate for when the plain text is deficient. It may be missing altogether or only contain a token message to the effect of "this is an HTML message, please use an email program capable of reading HTML". The smarter way Outlook should be working is to compare the inlcuded version with its fabricated plain text version. If it differs only slightly, the composer did purposefully include a version intended for plain text readers... display that one. If it differs substantially, go ahead and compensate by displaying that fabricated version rather than what is essentially nothing.

Alex, if you are only concerned with easily testing your plain text more conveniently than on a phone, can't you just use another email program?

 

[devott]

My question is whether there's anything we can include in our raw message code to signify to Outlook that it absolutely should display the included plain text version. The problem is that our plain text sometimes include extra information for plain text users which is not in our HTML version, and Outlook's fabricated version also misses the odd line break. We fix for the "extra line breaks removed" by adding a tab at the end of every line. If we send a plain text only message, it displays perfectly as intended with no alert for "extra line breaks removed". If we send a mixed message, all of our intended line breaks are there in the raw code of our plain text and HTML portions, but Outlook mangles it in its fabricated version and omits a break or two. We want our messages to display nice and neat just as we have worked so hard on to successfully achieve. Instead it's displaying some areas as a mangled jumbled mess that makes us look like we don't know what we're doing. We also want our plain text messages to include all of the content that we put there. In the offline world, what MS is doing would be called mail tampering.

SO, is there anything we can include in our code to let Outlook know it should not convert to plain text ? And if it's actually common/accepted practice for mail readers to do this (create a plain text from HTML), is there a 'standard' fix rather than an Outlook-specific fix to force the display of the included plain text instead ?