Outlook Template (.oft) sometimes appear as empty messages

[Thierry Borowiec]

To transfer html pages to oft file I do the following:
- In IE7, "Page" + "Send Page by E-mail"
- I switch to Office Outlook 2007 then, "Save as" + "Outlook Templates"
Then I publish these ".oft" files on a web server.

When users click the http link, Outlook 2003 opens ".oft" files, some of
them see only an empty e-mail, while some others see the normal page.

Is there any compatibility problem between Office 2003/2007?
How come some 2003 users can open it and some others can not?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

That's not what .oft files are designed for. An .msg file might work better.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Thierry Borowiec]

The aim of the .oft publication is to allow users of the web site to send
this e-mail (in oft format) to other people after light modification.
I thought oft was better for that.

Anyway it's even worse when I save file as .msg (with IE7+O2007).
I perfectly see the message imported from IE but when I try to open the MSG
file I saved, it's the same empty message that is sometimes seen with .oft.
Size on the disk of the .msg is 11 kb compared to more than 30 kb in .oft
format.
It contains (seen with notepad) some characters that are not displayed when
opened in Outlook.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Yes, creating new pre-formatted mesages would be an appropriate use of ..oft files. However, you still have the issue of whether an item created with Page | Send Page is going to work well in any version of Outlook. There's no guarantee that it will. It depends completely on the content of the web page. Also, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 support different HTML elements. You might want to look into the alternative methods of creating HTML-format messages listed at http://www.slipstick.com/mail1/html.htm

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers