Outlook/Exchange, you're pretty damn stupid.

HTML mail viewers are buggy and there are a large number of exploits that are sent to computers via badly formed html emails. Also HTML emails allow the senders to track how people view the emails if they contain images that exist on the senders computers rather than in the email itself. HTML email is bad stop sending it.

Or you’re going to… spank me?

Yeah, gazpacho, I like being bad, TELL ME I’M BAD, really, REALLY bad!

In Outlook the photos don’t download until you tell them to so I don’t see where the security risk really is, or at least any more so than the idiots that run .exe attachments from e-mail.

HTML email sent from an employer’s server to an employee of the company is not a security risk. Get over your Chicken Little self.

But to view them you have to have it enabled for all email. They are bad stop sending them.

Fuck off.

To expand, if you don’t know how to set your preferences to accept images from designated servers and not unknown servers, then you don’t know enough about email to be making the determination of what is “good” or “bad” and your opinion, to me, is worthless. Your repeated admonishment is annoying, wrong and baseless.

Try this for stupid Outlook.

Click Reply
Draft a reply, but do not send.
Delete draft

Outlook will show the message as replied to. It is easy to get distracted, leave a draft reply handing around for a while, then delete it in error. Then you have to “find related messages” or search your outbox to see if you really replied or not,

Yes, I am so bad!

crazyjoe, it’s been a while and I’m a bit rusty, but it should be possible to write a little macro which can run when you open Outlook or which can be hooked up to a menu and do things to messages after you’ve received them. If you want to e-mail me what version of Outlook you use and exactly what you want to do, I’ll see if I can find some free time at work during breaks and lunch to build something for you.

I’m with yoyodyne. I’ve designed forms in Outlook, and I don’t think I’ve ever made read receipts standard on them. You might want to have a word with whoever designed the form or your IT department. Chances are, you’re not the only one who’s annoyed by this.

Siege , thanks for the offer, I really do appreciate it. I don’t want to make you waste time at work doing something for me that really only saves me a couple of seconds, and would probably get more complicated than I would care to have it.

And my rant really isn’t about the firm with built-in read reciepts, it’s that outlook handles read receipts and distro lists in an stupid way.