Alternate mime encodings in Outlook 2007

[BH Powell]

I use Outlook 2007 in a mostly Lotus Notes corporate environment. (My email
gets forwarded to UNIX server, where I read it through pop3.)

Apparently, when people in Notes respond to my emails, they are returned as
multipart MIME messages with a text/plan part, and a text/html part. And
evidently, whatever they put in their response is only put in one or the
other encoding, but not both. My original message is left unmolested in the
other one.

Outlook evidently prefers one encoding for decoding, and it seems to be the
one without their response. So I get back a message that's what I sent out,
and I don't see their response.

Is there a way to have Outlook decode and show me both MIME parts? Or is
there some option to get it to prefer a particular decoding?

As it stands now, I have to go to the UNIX server and look at the raw email.
Hopefully, the encoding is readable (7bit, 8bit, quoted-printable),
otherwise it's a pain to decode the base64.

Thanks.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Outlook evidently prefers one encoding for decoding, and it seems to be
the
one without their response. So I get back a message that's what I sent
out,
and I don't see their response.

Is there a way to have Outlook decode and show me both MIME parts? Or is
there some option to get it to prefer a particular decoding?

I believe that if an HTML part is present, that is what Outlook will show
you. There are tools available (like the donationware Pocketknife Peek)
that can show you the various parts.

You should try to have the vendors of the software that generates the
erroneously formed replies to fix their software. When you reply to a
message, the client should reconstruct the parts so that they agree in
content. In lieu of that, configure that client so it uses HTML or plain
text exclusively, prohibiting the multiple parts.

 

[BH Powell]

[Sorry if this shows up twice. I got an error the first time.]

I believe that if an HTML part is present, that is what Outlook will show
you. There are tools available (like the donationware Pocketknife Peek)
that can show you the various parts.

Thanks, Brian. I tried Pocketknife Peek, but it did not decode the
alternate text/plain encoding, so it is not a solution. I appreciate the
suggestion, though.

I agree that Notes is behaving badly, but it seems like Outlook could retain
both encodings. Before my recent switch to Outlook for email, I have been
using Eudora for the last ten years. This wasn't an issue in Eudora, and
this is causing me to rethink my switch to Outlook. I was really hoping to
migrate off of Eudora.

I'll bring this up with our Notes people, but my use of Outlook (and Eudora)
are not a "supported use case", so I don't expect much sympathy.