Outlook 2007 Spacing Issues

[tldickson]

A new thread for trying to understand and correct the Outlook 2007
spacing issues in emails.

In a Vista Ultimate environment with all the latest patches, Outlook
"double-spaces" all emails regardless of format (html/text) in the
viewer and upon receipt to various clients. I'm not considering rich
text format, as for non-MS email recipients it isn't an option.

My current understanding with Outlook 2007 is that default paragraph
spacing styles cause the undesired "double-spacing" I see in emails I
write and receive, including text-only emails. I've spent some time
researching:

1. Changed the Normal style in the NormalEmail.dotm template - read
somewhere else that you have to set "exact" before and after spacing
amounts instead of just clicking "Don't add space between paragraphs
of the same style". Found that to be true once other clients are
involved. Once set, my emails were not double-spaced upon being
composed and were received single-spaced by Outlook 2003 (gmail was
double-spaced still).

2. Changed the Normal style in the Normal.dotm template - made same
modifications to this template, which then seems to have caused my
received emails to have single spacing now.

3. Although using <shift-enter> avoids the issue by forcing a soft
return instead of a hard return, this doesn't really solve the problem
since we can't expect gmail (etc.) users to use this key combination
(or the underlying html it generates in Outlook 2007). In short,
we're going to continue to receive and operate with paragraphs that
are intended to be single-spaced even if MS wants us to consider
changing over to all soft returns or something similar.

Nothing I've tried or found online helps me understand how to correct
this issue with emails that go to gmail or emails that I reply to from
Outlook 2003. In the latter, the text I type is still single-spaced,
but the original is all changed to double again.

Any help from some MVPs or MS folks would be greatly appreciated. If
I cannot ultimately resolve this problem I'll have to fall back to
Outlook 2003 and recommend that my clients do the same.

Thanks in advance!

Travis

 

[tldickson]

A new thread for trying to understand and correct the Outlook 2007
spacing issues in emails.

In a Vista Ultimate environment with all the latest patches, Outlook
"double-spaces" all emails regardless of format (html/text) in the
viewer and upon receipt to various clients.  I'm not considering rich
text format, as for non-MS email recipients it isn't an option.

My current understanding with Outlook 2007 is that default paragraph
spacing styles cause the undesired "double-spacing" I see in emails I
write and receive, including text-only emails.  I've spent some time
researching:

1.  Changed the Normal style in the NormalEmail.dotm template - read
somewhere else that you have to set "exact" before and after spacing
amounts instead of just clicking "Don't add space between paragraphs
of the same style".  Found that to be true once other clients are
involved.  Once set, my emails were not double-spaced upon being
composed and were received single-spaced by Outlook 2003 (gmail was
double-spaced still).

2.  Changed the Normal style in the Normal.dotm template - made same
modifications to this template, which then seems to have caused my
received emails to have single spacing now.

3.  Although using <shift-enter> avoids the issue by forcing a soft
return instead of a hard return, this doesn't really solve the problem
since we can't expect gmail (etc.) users to use this key combination
(or the underlying html it generates in Outlook 2007).  In short,
we're going to continue to receive and operate with paragraphs that
are intended to be single-spaced even if MS wants us to consider
changing over to all soft returns or something similar.

Nothing I've tried or found online helps me understand how to correct
this issue with emails that go to gmail or emails that I reply to from
Outlook 2003.  In the latter, the text I type is still single-spaced,
but the original is all changed to double again.

Any help from some MVPs or MS folks would be greatly appreciated.  If
I cannot ultimately resolve this problem I'll have to fall back to
Outlook 2003 and recommend that my clients do the same.

Thanks in advance!

Travis

FOLLOWUP: I think I wrote this article prematurely, as the two
template changes DID in fact fix the problem. Here's hoping this post
will help someone else. If you have Outlook 2007 and are frustrated
by the double-spacing thing (may only apply to those who didn't
upgrade, I have a friend who upgraded and has never seen this issue),
then try modifying the 2 Word templates, Normal and EmailNormal and
set the before and after paragraph spacing to 0 in the Normal style.

Cheers!