M
Marc Kupper
I frequently use plain text e-mail when sending messages. I had been
using Outlook 2000 but recently upgraded to a new machine and installed
Office 2003 SP1 on it. I've discovered that although the
"Automatically wrap text at X characters" setting was at 76 (the
default) that my plain text e-mails were not getting wrapped. As a FYI
- this option is available under Tool / Options / Mail Format (tab) /
[Internet Format...] (button). The Outlook 2003 version is
11.6359.6408 SP1.
I them set up a test file that is a series of sentences. Each sentence
is a single word followed by a string of four character long words and
ends in a period. In the series of sentences the first sentence has a
one character word at the beginning, the second has a two character
word, the third has a three character word, etc. Here's an example
though with the middle of each sentence snipped out and replaced with
"..."
A aahs aals aarp ... aced.
An acer aces ache ... adrs.
Eon adze aecs aeon ... ahas.
Caca ahem ahhs ahoy ... aked.
Parsi akee akes akha ... alga.
Borsht alia alif alii ... amen.
Using the Tools / Option menu I changed the "When Automatically wrap
text at X characters" setting to various values, sent myself a plain
text e-mail using the test sentences, and noted the results.
When wrapping is set to 30 the text is wrapped so that it always fits
in 30 characters. If the first word is longer than 30 characters it is
truncated and wrapped. In other words, wrapping works exactly as
expected.
When wrapping is set to 35 it works exactly the same as for 30
characters except that the wrapping occurs at 35 characters.
When wrapping is set to 40 things fall apart a little. The first four
sentences were wrapped correctly but the fifth sentence is not wrapped
at all and every fifth sentence in the list after that is not wrapped.
It turns out these sentences have a word whose last character is
exactly at column 40. When testing with 30 and 35 Outlook allowed for
lines that were exactly 30 and 35 characters long. At 40 Outlook's
wrapping gets disabled if a line would be exactly 40 characters long.
Outlook is truncating/wrapping words that are more than 40 characters
long but when the second or third line in the test sentence hits 40
characters Outlook's wrapping gets disabled from that point on out for
that sentence.
I then backed down and tested wrap settings of 36 through 39 - They all
worked fine and so it looks like the problem starts at 40.
At 41 the wrapping fails like it does for 40 but it fails for lines
that would be exactly 40 and 41 characters long. The failure is that
wrapping gets disabled from that point on out for the line. If the
first word is 41 or more characters long it's still truncated/wrapped
as with wrap settings of 30 to 40.
A wrap setting of 42 is similar to 41 and wrapping fails when lines
would be exactly 40, 41, or 42 characters long.
A wrap setting of 43 is similar to 42 and wrapping fails when lines
would be exactly 40 to 43 characters long.
At 44 on up none of my test lines are wrapped as they would always be
within 40 to 44 characters long as the filler words I'm using are four
characters long followed by a single space. I could construct more
test sentences but believe I already have enough data to reproduce a
specific problem.
Googling about for solutions lead me to
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=823921. The WrapLines settings seems
to work as advertised. When WrapLines is set to 0 then Outlook never
wraps text. However, if I don't have this setting, or it is set to 1,
then wrapping occurs and fails exactly as documented above. Can you
think of something else I could try to fix this?
TIA,
Marc
using Outlook 2000 but recently upgraded to a new machine and installed
Office 2003 SP1 on it. I've discovered that although the
"Automatically wrap text at X characters" setting was at 76 (the
default) that my plain text e-mails were not getting wrapped. As a FYI
- this option is available under Tool / Options / Mail Format (tab) /
[Internet Format...] (button). The Outlook 2003 version is
11.6359.6408 SP1.
I them set up a test file that is a series of sentences. Each sentence
is a single word followed by a string of four character long words and
ends in a period. In the series of sentences the first sentence has a
one character word at the beginning, the second has a two character
word, the third has a three character word, etc. Here's an example
though with the middle of each sentence snipped out and replaced with
"..."
A aahs aals aarp ... aced.
An acer aces ache ... adrs.
Eon adze aecs aeon ... ahas.
Caca ahem ahhs ahoy ... aked.
Parsi akee akes akha ... alga.
Borsht alia alif alii ... amen.
Using the Tools / Option menu I changed the "When Automatically wrap
text at X characters" setting to various values, sent myself a plain
text e-mail using the test sentences, and noted the results.
When wrapping is set to 30 the text is wrapped so that it always fits
in 30 characters. If the first word is longer than 30 characters it is
truncated and wrapped. In other words, wrapping works exactly as
expected.
When wrapping is set to 35 it works exactly the same as for 30
characters except that the wrapping occurs at 35 characters.
When wrapping is set to 40 things fall apart a little. The first four
sentences were wrapped correctly but the fifth sentence is not wrapped
at all and every fifth sentence in the list after that is not wrapped.
It turns out these sentences have a word whose last character is
exactly at column 40. When testing with 30 and 35 Outlook allowed for
lines that were exactly 30 and 35 characters long. At 40 Outlook's
wrapping gets disabled if a line would be exactly 40 characters long.
Outlook is truncating/wrapping words that are more than 40 characters
long but when the second or third line in the test sentence hits 40
characters Outlook's wrapping gets disabled from that point on out for
that sentence.
I then backed down and tested wrap settings of 36 through 39 - They all
worked fine and so it looks like the problem starts at 40.
At 41 the wrapping fails like it does for 40 but it fails for lines
that would be exactly 40 and 41 characters long. The failure is that
wrapping gets disabled from that point on out for the line. If the
first word is 41 or more characters long it's still truncated/wrapped
as with wrap settings of 30 to 40.
A wrap setting of 42 is similar to 41 and wrapping fails when lines
would be exactly 40, 41, or 42 characters long.
A wrap setting of 43 is similar to 42 and wrapping fails when lines
would be exactly 40 to 43 characters long.
At 44 on up none of my test lines are wrapped as they would always be
within 40 to 44 characters long as the filler words I'm using are four
characters long followed by a single space. I could construct more
test sentences but believe I already have enough data to reproduce a
specific problem.
Googling about for solutions lead me to
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=823921. The WrapLines settings seems
to work as advertised. When WrapLines is set to 0 then Outlook never
wraps text. However, if I don't have this setting, or it is set to 1,
then wrapping occurs and fails exactly as documented above. Can you
think of something else I could try to fix this?
TIA,
Marc