Embedded tables in forwarded mail

[Idaho Word Man]

Sometimes (read "very often") I'll get an e-mail that looks good when I read
it. But when I try to forward it, I discover that the contents of the message
are in a table, which is in another table, which is within another table,
etc. Sometimes the message seems to be embedded five or six tables deep. This
behavior is most common with jokes or other notes that have been forwarded
multiple times.

Usually I get ticked and take the message out of the tables, but I wonder
where the tables came from in the first place, and I wonder if Outlook will
just put my forwarded message back into one or more tables after I've gone to
the trouble of taking it out.

Is there a setting I can change that will change this behavior, so that a
message is just a message rather than being embedded in multiple nested
tables? Or is this just the way Outlook works?

I'm using Office 2003 in Windows XP Professional. I have my options set to
compose in HTML, using Word as my e-mail editor.

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Roady [MVP]]

This is not how Outlook works but how you received the message from the
sender. Tell him/her to clean up the email before forwarding or just ignore
it.

Usually an easy way to clear the unwanted formatting of the original email
when replying is to convert the message to Plain Text or select all your
text and press the Clear Formatting button.