How To Disable Curly Quotes In Windows Live Mail 2011

When composing formatted email (meaning the type where you can bold/italic/underline text), when you type an apostrophe or double-quotes, Windows Live Mail 2011 will automatically replace those with what most people know as "curly quotes".

The problem with curly quotes is that for some people you may send mail to, their email will show your double-quotes and apostrophes as garbled characters.

This can be fixed, but it requires a registry hack to do it.

Step 1. Launch the registry editor

Click Windows Logo or Start button, then Run, type regedit and click OK.

Step 2. Search for SmartQuotes

Click Edit, then Find and search for SmartQuotes:

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Click Find Next in the same window and in a moment the registry editor will locate it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have both Windows Live Mail 2011 and Windows Live Writer installed, there will be a SmartQuotes entry for each. Once you find the first SmartQuotes, search one more time to make sure there are no others. If there are, you’ll have to examine the left pane to make sure you’re not under Writer but rather Windows Live Mail. Just follow the folder tree up and you’ll see it.

Step 3. Change SmartQuotes from a 1 to a 0

When you see this:

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Double-click it, and change the value to 0:

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That’s it, and you’re done. Close the registry editor and Windows Live 2011 will show double-quotes and apostrophes without the "curl".

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