It annoys me to no end when people send plain text emails. This is 2009 not 1989.
Worse is when my reply is also defaulted to plain text, so my nice neat formatted signature gets mauled to look ugly.
I know you can change the format of the email once you’ve pressed ‘reply’ but by then it’s too late. The sig is plain text and the email’s default font is set to the plain-text default.
I also know that the person I’m replying to will probably get my email in plain text on their crappy email reader/account. But I want to be stubbourn about this. I want to force people out of the eighties, not have them force me into the eighties.
And anyone I CC may have email clients accounts that can read formatted emails so I want my reply to be formatted for their benefit.
A formatted chain of emails is MUCH easier to read than everything being in the same bloody font/colour/style.
So, can I make it so that when I click reply, My email sig is un-touched and my formatting options are all there?
In 2007 the Help pages give the only solution as changing the format after you create the reply, as you describe. I have been unable to find a way to do what you want. I’m pretty sure you can do this with VBA but Outlook is the least accommodating Office application for writing VBA because there is no macro recorder. Microsoft’s rationale for this is that there are actions you can take that can’t be recorded as VBA. I have written only a couple of macros for Outlook and am not that familiar with the object model. If I find myself with an hour to blow on figuring this out I’ll get back to you.
Also, just FYI, although HTML and rich text is awful pretty, that’s where most of the security holes have been found in Outlook. This is one reason that many people have stuck with plain text email.
This is awkward, but it works: do the “reply,” create a new message to that person, copy the quoted text from the reply to the new message, and delete the reply.
I don’t understand why it bothers you. Just because you can use fancy fonts and pretty pictures in your emails doesn’t mean you should force other people to do it. If you’re okay with purple Comic Sans on a pink flowery background, why not allow them to send the default font on a white background?
I prefer to receive plain text because then I can set the default font and text size to something that’s comfortable to me. I’m not struggling to read tiny scripty fonts (what looks okay on your Windows screen may look tiny and blocky on my Mac screen), I don’t have to look at godawful background images and color combinations, and my system doesn’t get clogged up with 50K messages that should be 2K messages.
Also, as mentioned upthread, the HTML option is where a lot of the security holes have been. That’s why I don’t allow the use of Microsoft Outlook on any of the Windows machines at my businesses, and other email clients have to be set to use their own built-in viewer.
Ditto. I hate hate hate HTML-formatted email because the vast majority of it that I receive is spam. Even if it’s not something bad just opening it signals the sender that your address is “live” and being checked so you get more crap. I got sick of it and set Outlook to just open everything in plain text format.
If I need to include a picture or whatever, I set that message to RTF but for 99% of what I send & receive, TXT is absolutely perfect.
This looks like a nice package and will do what the OP wants, and then some. My guess is that this is a package of VBA macros, probably passworded so you can’t copy the code.
As for the other solutions above, the OP is trying to preserve his HTML signature, among other things, which these solutions don’t provide. You can still do an “insert signature” after the mail is created and converted, but that’s still several steps.
I gotta say I don’t like that idea. I understand that you want to force people into modern times, where we are probably no longer using dial up for an internet connection. I can only assume that the folks who are using dial up today for what ever reason, be it expense, lack of service, it ain’t broke don’t fix it, would be casualties of your policy if they don’t want to get with your program.
I don’t like it cause your removing my choice about how I recieve information and while you might think it’s pushing us to the present day, I see that as regressing to the pre 80’s and push media. If this is a news letter or something of that nature, you might want to send out a mass mail to your list regarding your intentions and allow folks to unsubscribe or give them an option to view your missives on a formtted web page.
This does everything except put in your signature, haven’t figured out how to do that yet. You can paste this into a VBA Module, then create a button that runs this macro. It will work just like the built-in Reply button. Let me know if you don’t know how to work with VBA.
Public Sub ReplyToPlainTextWithHTML()
Dim HTMLReplyMail As Outlook.MailItem
If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count Then
If TypeOf Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1) Is Outlook.MailItem Then
Set HTMLReplyMail = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
HTMLReplyMail.To = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SenderEmailAddress
HTMLReplyMail.BodyFormat = olFormatHTML
HTMLReplyMail.Subject = "Re: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Subject
HTMLReplyMail.HTMLBody = ">>Need to figure out how to insert signature here<<" & "<br>" & _
"-----Original Message-----" & "<br>" & _
"From: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SenderName & "<br>" & _
"Sent: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SentOn & "<br>" & _
"To: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).To & "<br>" & _
"cc: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Cc & "<br>" & _
"Subject: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Subject & "<br>" & _
Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).HTMLBody
HTMLReplyMail.Display
End If
End If
End Sub
I hate receiving HTML emails, and will drop newsletters and such that don’t have a plain-text format. All my incoming emails default to text.
Security issues are one reason. The ridiculous size of HTML emails is another. The horrendous craptacular formatting and ludicrous huge signatures is a third.
I’m sure your emails are beautifully and tastefully formatted, and I have no doubt that it is imperative that I get your spectacular signature in pristine condition. That is not true, however, for 99.5% of the mail I receive in HTML.
Of course, I find it extremely annoying when people automate their signature so that it’s attached every single time they touch an email. If you’re not doing that, then it’s not really a problem to change the format after you reply. Obviously, YMMV.
I work in a technical field where a lot of replying gets done. (I also work for a company, so my correspondence should always look professional) plain-text doesn’t look professional. It looks basic, backwards. unhelpful.
A lot of the emails I participate in contain between 1 and 21 of the previous emails underneath.
If those underneath emails are all plain text then what you have is a horrible run-on mess of text. If they’re all formatted then you have a nice graphically easy to follow sequence of emails. CookingwithGas I’ll try out your code
Yup, me too - technical field, chain emails, same same. I just don’t think that the vast, vast majority of HTML emails I receive look professional. Plain text looks professional. Boring, perhaps, but professional. shrug
Chacun a son gout.
Good luck with your solution! Hope it works for you.
Here’s an update that includes a signature. Below, find the string “SIGNAME” and replace it with the name of your reply signature as found under Tools, Options, Mail Format, Signatures.
Oh, and what version of Outlook are you using?
Option Explicit
Public Sub ReplyToPlainTextWithHTML()
Dim HTMLReplyMail As Outlook.MailItem
If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count Then
If TypeOf Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1) Is Outlook.MailItem Then
Set HTMLReplyMail = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
HTMLReplyMail.To = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SenderEmailAddress
HTMLReplyMail.BodyFormat = olFormatHTML
HTMLReplyMail.Subject = "Re: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Subject
Dim SigString As String
SigString = "C:\Documents and Settings\" & Environ("username") & _
"\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures\SIGNAME.htm"
Dim mailSig As String
If Dir(SigString) <> "" Then
mailSig = GetBoiler(SigString)
Else
mailSig = ""
End If
HTMLReplyMail.HTMLBody = mailSig & "<br>" & _
"-----Original Message-----" & "<br>" & _
"From: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SenderName & "<br>" & _
"Sent: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).SentOn & "<br>" & _
"To: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).To & "<br>" & _
"cc: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Cc & "<br>" & _
"Subject: " & Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).Subject & "<br>" & _
Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection(1).HTMLBody
HTMLReplyMail.Display
End If
End If
End Sub
Function GetBoiler(ByVal sFile As String) As String
'Dick Kusleika
Dim fso As Object
Dim ts As Object
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ts = fso.GetFile(sFile).OpenAsTextStream(1, -2)
GetBoiler = ts.readall
ts.Close
End Function
Not sure that using HTML will solve your problem then. After all, all that is going to happen to the reply history is it will be changed to the default HTML font. They’re not going to get magically formatted.
I don’t know if it is configurable as i do not have one, but all emails I receive from PDAs/Blackberries are in plain text. The sender may have no choice.
I know that. I am talking about when people don’t converse in plain text. It looks neater and easier to follow. Formatting exists for a reason. Imagine if everyone made websites with one font, no structure, no pictures, no underlines etc…
I hate plain text but I hate HTML even more. I find that it’s quirky, though that may be just my ineptitude. (E.g. sometimes I copy text from one source and paste to another - it’s a lot easier to “paste special/text” as can be done in RTF than to have to recreate the formatting of your email as you apparently need to do in HTML. Also, you can only insert links to files in RTF. And so on.)
But I would like a way to preserve the RTF that I like.
One other thing that’s even worse is these email responses that automatically insert “>” symbols in front of the prior attached emails. Problem is that when you have lengthy email exchanges, the earlier of which have lengthy >>>>>>>>>> marks in front of what has been reduced to a few words on each line. When you print these out and put them in files for later usage, it’s difficult & unpleasant to follow.
I don’t specifically mean HTML. I basically mean Formatted. I may have picked HTML because I was under the impression that it is the most common form of formatted email, and that RTF is less likely to be universally supported.
But correct me if that’s wrong. Would it be all-round better to use RTF (“Rich Text”)?
