Plain Text, Signatures and Links

[Woody]

Was wondering if someone could clarify something for me. I am using Outlook
2007. I have selected Tools, Options, Mail Format and then selected Plain
Text.

I have a link in my signature to a web site. I noticed that after doing the
above, that link is no longer underlined and in blue when I create a new
email. However, I noticed that when sending an email to myself, when I
receive it it is in blue and underlined.

Just wondering if someone could explains what is going on.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Wednesday, April 01, 2009 3:16:07 PM, and on a
whim, Woody pounded out on the keyboard:

Was wondering if someone could clarify something for me. I am using Outlook
2007. I have selected Tools, Options, Mail Format and then selected Plain
Text.

I have a link in my signature to a web site. I noticed that after doing the
above, that link is no longer underlined and in blue when I create a new
email. However, I noticed that when sending an email to myself, when I
receive it it is in blue and underlined.

Just wondering if someone could explains what is going on.

Hi Woody,

Links are not active in a Compose window so that they can be more easily
edited. They will be active when you send, as you can test this by
saving it as a draft. It's also up to the recipient's email to convert
it. Most email clients do, but not all webmail clients do.

Terry R.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Was wondering if someone could clarify something for me. I am using

Links are not active in a Compose window so that they can be more
easily edited.

I don't buy that. If I compose in text only, it does convert a url to be
clickable.

Try it, start a plain text message, type www.cnn.com and hit space. Should
be clickable.

They will be active when you send, as you can test this
by saving it as a draft. It's also up to the recipient's email to
convert it. Most email clients do, but not all webmail clients do.

Woody, it's actually a little more confusing then this.

Outlook makes something clickable in your window when it's able to recognize
that you've finished typing a url format it recognizes.

For instance, in that message you've started, type www.cnn.com and don't
do anything. It doesn't make it clickable yet. It won't until you close
the window and save it to drafts or hit send (assuming you've put an address
to send it to).

So, when it auto-inserts that signature, it isn't calculating that what just
got entered is a url or not. It's just inserting the text you wanted.

Now, the window that you read messages in, it does the same sort of thing,
it parses the text you've received and says 'this is a url, make it clickable'.
It can make mistakes. For instance, if you type in a full email address
(like (e-mail address removed)) and hit space, OL will look at what you just
typed and say 'Hey, I recognize that as an email address, lets make it a
mailto: url. You could also type (e-mail address removed) and it'll do
the same thing, even tho that's not really an email address. Sort of the
same way your cellphone can recognize a 10 digit string of numbers as a phone
number, regardless of whether it's a phone number or not.

Basically, it's working exactly like it should.

 

[Giladi99]

I have a similar problem.
Whenever I wrote a URL in an email in the past, it immediately underlined it
for me.
A few days ago I clicked on something by mistake, and since then my links
don't underline. (unless I save a draft and reopen it as you suggested)

I want to see the underline while I'm writing the email, and I know it
always used to be like that.

Any idea how I can get Outlook to underline my links again?

thanks