Editing an HTML format (received) email

[Guest]

Hi,
(I am happy to see that this Mac.Entourage forum now seems to have
Microsoft developer responses -- Yay. When I had been referred to the
Microsoft forums at the bottom of my Entourage folder list last year or so,
I gave up after a short time of sending, reading, because it seemed only
lots of questions and no answers. I am glad to see answers now, so now I
have a few questions to post.)

I often times try to edit my email messages so that they do not take up as
much space in my Entourage data base.

But when I receive an HTML format email, and then choose Message / Edit
Message, it gives me a warning that: HTML formatting will be disabled, do I
want to do it anyway.

Usually I go ahead. Sometimes I end up with a plain text message with line
breaks (paragraphs), which is OK by me many times.
But sometimes I end up with a long string of words with no line breaks, no
paragraphs at all. Even if I repeatedly try to re-edit and put line breaks
in. Once I click the close-window Save (or Save and then close window) and
call it back, I see the email message is now a continuous string of words
and single spaces, no line breaks. Almost impossible to read anymore.

I have worked on Windows Outlook (and I know it is a different code-base
project), but in Outlook, you can edit an HTML message, and the formatting
stays HTML (if you want it to), or also can be changed to plain text with
intentional line breaks maintained, so that humans can read it.

Is it possible to add this functionality to Entourage:
To allow Edit-Message to either maintain HTML format, or barring that, to
at least be able to maintain human readable text with line breaks
(paragraphs) rather than having strings of continuous words.

If useful, I could search or save some specific examples, as I sort of
gave up on the whole MS-feedback-response possibility a long time ago and
have just been living with the pain of the several product design/feature
issues (see my opening comment).

My setup:
- current email identity is 690 MB with god-knows how many thousands of
historical (or is it hysterical?) email history messages.
- 2 GHz G5 PPC iMac
- 1.5 GB RAM
- OS X 10.4 Tiger (10.4.7),
- and all the latest Office Mac updates (Entourage is 11.2.5)
(Though! I just noticed there was a 11.2.6 update that I somehow missed,
and will now go and apply)

Thank you. Best. Bruce.

 

[Allen Watson]

Is it possible to add this functionality to Entourage:
To allow Edit-Message to either maintain HTML format, or barring that, to
at least be able to maintain human readable text with line breaks
(paragraphs) rather than having strings of continuous words.

No doubt the function _could_ be added; you can used "Send Feedback" on the
Help menu to make the request of the developers. But it isn't there now.
Better HTML editing abilities are often requested, so add your voice to the
list.

I'm not sure why the HTML messages you edit sometimes lose their line breaks
and become unreadable. It probably has something to do with the original
format of the message. If I were you, I would download the free text editor
from Bare Bones Software, Text Wrangler. Then, in Entourage I would select
all and copy, and then paste into Text Wrangler. You have much more control
over the text in that application, and probably will be able to fix the file
so it is readable. At which point you can switch back to Entourage and
Paste, if you want the message there as plain text.