I use Outlook for the same reason you do… it’s free. It also happens to rock! Anyway, one thing about it stinks significanly:
When I reply to an email and want to quote a section of the original, Outlook inserts these jackass tags with my name in them every time I type a new line. Then, it turns my text a different color. I understand why Bill thought this was important… I just don’t like the how. Anyone know if it is possible to change the settings?
Since you mentioned it was free, I’m assuming you’re talking about Outlook Express. There’s no way to change the reply settings. You can turn off the ‘Include message inreply’ function by going to Tools -> options, and unchecking the proper box in the Send tab.
If you’re talking about the full version of Outlook though, you’ve got some more options. From the Tools -> Options menu, click on ‘E-mail Options’ under the preferences tab. In there, there’s a section on how Outlook handles replies and forwards, including weather or not it should include the entire message, indent your reply and so on.
In the menu, tools, options, and depending on which version you use, the tab will be something like Email options, there is a section for configuring replies and forwards.
I’m not being narky, but don’t be afraid to use the Help section, most user’s quistions are answered in there.
I wasn’t clear enough, I guess.
I said “free” because Outlook was on my machine when it was delievered to my office. What I mean is that it was as free as the rest of MS Office.
Anyway, Tools --> Options —Email tab just lets me change new mail notification kind of stuff. The Reading tab let’s me change how replies and forwards handle the original text, but not how my text is formatted.
Anyone else have any ideas?
What version are you using? 97/98/2000?
I’m in 2000 now, and I’ve used 98 recently, and if you go to Tools ~~> Options then click on the E-mail Options button, you should get a screen that some options at the bottom to let you change your reply features. There should be two drop down boxes, one that says over it “When replying to a message” then it has a drop down box right below it. You’re probably says “Prefix each line of the original message” if you have that option selected, then just below that, you should see a box that let’s you put in what you what the character to be that prefix’s the lines. Right below that should be a check-box that says “Mark my comments with” then next to that it has your name or something. Make sure that’s not checked.
Let me know if this help, the only other thing I can think of is that you’re using Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor, which would give you some different options.
Atrael,
I’m using Outlook '97.
The options you are describing sound like they are exactly what I am looking for… but I don’t see them in mu set of Options. 
Free Agent, http://www.forteinc.com is a much better email & newsreader. They have a pay version tooo. You must know your mail server, so, far as I know you can’t use it with AOL.
handy, I’m pretty sure that Free Agent doesn’t handle mail - you need the full Agent software to do that. I know because Agent is my mail client on my home machine. It’s great - simple and fast - I just wish it had nested folders.
On my work machine, I’m required to use Outlook (98). I used to keep a list of all the completely inane things that Outlook would do w/ regards to e-mail. It’s as if MS doesn’t know how to write a simple mail program. Some of them are:
When you want to use the standard reply format of indenting all the replied text with “>”, Outlook breaks each original line up into two lines, one much longer than the other. It makes it look like an idiot composed the mail.
When composing e-mail, it line-wraps to the window width, instead of the number of characters really in an e-mail line, so you get no idea of how your message will look upon sending.
When Outlook is receiving mail from the server, it’s completely locked up while it does it. If someone sends me a multi-megabyte file and I’m on a dial-in connection, I cannot read messages or compose replies until it downloads every last byte of the incoming message.
Plain text attachments can’t be viewed from within Outlook - you have to launch an external text editor program.
Outlook’s “rules” don’t work very well. Sometimes they don’t work at all, and there is no regular expression matching or boolean combinations as in Agent.
Outlooks rules don’t operate on messages already downloaded.
If you have set up a default signature, it appears above the text you’re quoting when doing a reply.
You can’t highlight certain text in a message, and have it quote only that when replying - Outlook can only quote the whole message.
There’s no (obvious) way to sort messages by thread.
If someone sends me a message in Rich Text Format, I can’t change the format back to plain text when forwarding or replying, so I look like one of those boobs who doesn’t know that e-mail is supposed to be plain text.
Shall I go on?
May I recommend Eudora 4.3.2, from http://www.eudora.com. The full version is free (though it has one of those ad banner doobreys in it), and the Lite version is also free, though less comprehensive.
It’s the email app of choice in my Office, and I do tech support for an ISP, so I know what hell Microsoft can cause the suffering email sender and recipient.