Using Word in Outlook

[Joe McGuire]

I am not sure if this is really a question for the Outlook BB, but since the
MVPs here seem so much better than anywhere else (including, ahem, the
company who produced this "integrated" productivity software--earth to
Redmond, are you listening? I didn't think so.) this was a good place to
start. I have OL 2003 Mail formatting set to Compose in html (the other
alternatives are Rich Text and Plain Text) and to use Word 2003 to edit
e-mail messages. I have a template called E-mail.dot in the Word templates
folder and a Stationery called E-mail.html in the Stationery folder. I have
a collection of Signatures (in html) in the Signature folder.

I can modify the styles in my e-mail messages, such as "Space after" for
paragraphs, heading styles, etc, and can check "Add to Template" to save
these in a template somewhere. But the next time I compose an e-mail
message, the formatting changes I supposedly added are nowhere to be found.
If I had changed spacing after to, say 12pts with the next e-mail message it
is back to zero. Where is the template where this stuff is suppposed to be
saved? What must I do to make these formatting changes "stick?"

 

[Joe McGuire]

Any ideas???

 

[Graham Mayor]

It appears that the paragraph style used to create e-mail messages is
whatever the initial style is in Word's normal.dot (by default the normal
style - though I use body text here, which has inter paragraph spacing).
However, the *font* used to create the messages is derived from Outlook >
Tools > Options > Mail Format > Fonts (plus any stationery option) which
override the settings on normal.dot. There is apparently nothing to stop you
applying your own styles to your texts.

Personally I find html e-mail a waste of bandwidth. Many users switch off
the ability to display html, preferring the safer text option, and (until
Word 2007 at least) the use of Word as e-mail editor is a bit of a lash-up.
Outlook's own editor is quite adequate to the task of writing e-mails.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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