rules and HTML in message body

[Mickey Ferguson]

I'm using outlook 2003 and am trying to write a rule that will act based on
finding text in the body of the message. The message comes to me in HTML
format.

1) When processing a rule, does the engine look at the HTML and treat it as
plain text? How does it search through the message for the string(s)?

2) If I want to know exactly what I am to search for, do I take the message
and do a Save As, choose text, and then look at the resultant text to
determine my search? Or should I save it as HTML, then use a text editor to
see exactly how it will appear?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

1) When processing a rule, does the engine look at the HTML and treat it as
plain text? How does it search through the message for the string(s)?

As far as I can tell from my experiments, rules cannot examine the HTML itself
at all, only the text of the message.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, April 16, 2009 11:33:25 AM, and on a
whim, Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook] pounded out on the keyboard:

As far as I can tell from my experiments, rules cannot examine the HTML itself
at all, only the text of the message.

If the message is sent as multi-part, it will be there twice (which is
how most are sent).

And an HTML message without text is basically no message at all
(excluding attachments)! ;-)


Terry R.