Plain text replies - Should be easy enough

[Stephen Fischer]

Greetings,

I would like to set up Outlook such that when I want to reply to an HTML,
plain text, or any kind of email for that matter, Outlook automatically
creates the reply using plain text, with a ">" prefixed at the beginning of
each line, and each line no more than 76 characters long. Seems simple
enough.

To accomplish this, I first went to Tools, and then Options, and then
clicked the email options button in the preferences tab. In the drop down
box labeled "When replying to a message", I selected "Prefix each line of
the original message". In the text box labeled "Prefix each line with", ">"
is inserted. Then I went to the Mail Format tab, and for the drop down box
labeled "Send in this message format", I selected "Plain Text". In the
text box labeled "Automatically wrap at", 76 is inserted.

This seems like the only settings that need to be messed with in order to
configure Outlook the way I described above. However, when I now reply to
an HTML email, it sets up the reply in HTML format, with the previous
message indented, and a blue line drawn down the left hand side. I don't
want this HTML formatted email, I want the plain text. Did I miss
something in the configuration? This is really irritating me. Not only is
it not doing what I configured it to do, but it's also promoting a
particular type of email etiquette known as top-posting, which is widely
recognized as counter-intuitive and vulgar.

I am using Outlook 2000 with all the latest updates.

Thanks in advance for any help on this,
sf

 

[Brian Tillman]

I would like to set up Outlook such that when I want to reply to an
HTML, plain text, or any kind of email for that matter, Outlook
automatically creates the reply using plain text, with a ">" prefixed
at the beginning of each line, and each line no more than 76
characters long. Seems simple enough.

In order to reply in plain text, you must read the message in plain text.
Outlook 2000 doesn't have that ability. You can, however, specify that you
wish to send to someone in plain text, provided that address in in your
Contacts. You can specify the sending options for a contact so that
messages to that contact will always be send in plain text. I've not tested
a reply, however, to an address so marked.

If it works, however, Outlook-Quotefix will enhance your replies.
http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/