pgrant said in news:
[email protected]:
I recently installed Outlook 2003 and am unable to read
messages sent from other Outlook 2003 computers when the
emails are sent in the plain text format. The mail
arrives with attachments, but the message body is blank.
Re-installing doesn't help. HTML and Rich Text are
received OK. What could be the problem?
If the sender used HTML formatting, it may be that they did NOT include a plain-text MIME part in their message. When sending HTML formatted e-mail, there should be two MIME parts: one MIME part for a plain-text version of the message and another MIME part for the HTML-formatted version. Some only include the MIME part for the HTML-formatted version, so when you force to read as plain text only you will won't see anything because the sender did not include a plain-text part. For example, e-mails sent from Hotmail accounts do not include a plain-text MIME part. Because of this, I had to disable the "HTML without alternative text" spam criteria in the HTML-Modify plug-in to SpamPal (or whitelist my friends sending from Hotmail accounts). I believe it is an RFC violation to not include a plain-text MIME part for HTML-formatted e-mails but then there are way too many SHOULDs in the RFCs instead of MUSTs.
You will need to look at the raw message code to determine if the sender actually included a plain-text MIME part in their HTML-formatted message. However, you won't be able to see the raw message format when using Outlook. As soon as a message is received, Outlook mangles the message to convert it into Microsoft's proprietary format used for storing items within its message store (i.e., the .pst file). You will need to use a different e-mail client, like Magic Mail Monitor (mmm3.sourfceforge.net), or use the webmail interface to your ISP e-mail account (if they provide one AND if they provide a raw view of the message) to see the MIME parts.
Rather than force plain-text views of HTML-formatted e-mails, get SpamPal with its HTML-Modify plug-in which will let you [more] safely read HTML-formatted e-mails. It can strip out linked images that can be used as web bugs or web beacons by spammers or by users of MsgTag (who borrowed the spammers' trick) that want to see when you open your e-mails from them. It can strip out all images if you want. It can nullify many HTML tags used by spammers which will render ineffective any scripts and other nasties put into the HTML-formatted message. It can weight the HTML coding for invalid tags. Spammers will often use invalid HTML tags to hide content from filters but still be legible to humans, but these tags are invalid and the more there are the more HTML-Modify will weight them as spammy (and you can define the thresholds). It can remove known security holes in HTML (that spammers try to abuse in browsers). It can delete multi-part e-mails (rarely a need except by idiots who think e-mail is a substitute for FTP for huge files). Bad attachments (i.e., executable) can be renamed with a .txt extension to avoid accidental execution, and can do the same to links to files within the message. There are several plug-ins to SpamPal, and it's all free.
NOTE: Do not post in all caps, even in the Subject line. It is considered as shouting and is rude! Rather than draw more attention to your post, the effect is to turn away potential respondents because they are not interested in replying to someone that shouts or thinks their post is any more important than others by using all caps, a bunch of asterisks or other characters, or otherwise try to wail more loudly.
