Any way of forcing Plain Text Format universally?

[Astra]

Hi All

Wonder if you can help. My problem is as follows:

1) A user (A) on MS Outlook 2001 for Mac sends an internal email (via
Exchange 2003) to user (B) on the LAN who is using MS Outlook 2002 on WinXP.
At this stage there appears to be no option to select Plain Text format in
MS Outlook 2001 for Mac, but the font used to compose the message is Arial
regular 12, which I would have thought would be OK for a PC to read without
converting.

2) Even though user (B)'s Outlook is set to compose messages in Plain Text
Format, double-clicking on this message and then going to the Format menu
confirms that this message has been classed as Rich Text Format. There is
no real problem at this stage as the message looks OK, if a little more
rounded on the font side.

3) The problem lies at this stage. User (B) forwards this message to user
(C) (using the same Exchange 2003 on the LAN) who is running Outlook 2003
and which is also set to Plain Text Format by default.

For some reason Outlook 2003 converts the Rich Text message to Plain Text
and proceeds to put the '>' (forwarded) char before every line. This is a
MAJOR pain.

4) My Tests:

a) To try and rectify this, I have looked throughout MS Outlook 2001 for Mac
for an option to set the messages as Plain Text, but no joy.

b) I have gone into settings of the MS Outlook 2002 for WinXP program and
made sure that when it forwards it does not indent or have any prefix char,
but no joy.

c) If I go to the Format menu in the MS Outlook 2002 for WinXP program and
manually set it to Plain Text before it is sent to user (C) then it is fine,
but this seems to be a laborious and unnecessary task.

Do you know of a way to resolve this?

Many thanks.

Rgds

Robbie

 

[T]

In Outlook 2003, there's a setting to read all standard
mail as text. I wonder if this will help?

If you go to Options -> Preferences -> Email Options
(button), there's a check box under "message handling"
called "Read all standard mail in plain text".

I've got it turned off but I can't remember if it was a
default setting or not...

T