Email Format

[babylon5guy]

Hi,
Is there any advantage to what email format you use, HTML, Rich Text, or Plain Text. I notice more and more email that I get is in HTML format. It seems like all the free email programs are in HTML. Not a big problem, it seems whatever I use works just fine. But I always wondered if there was some advantage of using one over the other.
TIA

[ktkendall]

You can do graphics and such in HTML

[wintomato]

As long as the person receiving the email has chosen to view emails in html format aswell. otherwise your beautiful colourful email will just arrive with them as plain text.
worth remembering.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks Guys. It seems to me that when I receive email it stays in the format the sender used, and even if I forward it, it stays in that same format, Outlook does not convert it to my default. I use Outlook 2000 by the way.

[reboot]

It is a totaly faux pas to send email in anything but plain text.
Sure, Outhouse express might look really nice with backgrounds and fancy, bandwidth eating junk, but it's crap for those of us that use text based email clients (to avoid trojans mostly).
If you use HTML or RTF to send me email, I get the basic message in text, and everything else is dumped as an attachment.
Professional, business type's will always send ONLY text, and BTW, hyperlinks do show up, but no active accessing of the net for advertising pics and other junk that usually accompanies the spam sort.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks Reboot. How do you set Outlook to do that? When I receive something it is in the format the person sent it.

[doctorgonzo]

reboot brings up a good point: HTML is a double-edged sword. Sure, it allows you to format text and include graphics and such, but it also allows for malicious code that can screw your PC.

Because I use PGP, I send e-mail in plain text. The inability to format my text hasn't harmed me yet, I think.

[glc]

I'm also a dinosaur with an attitude - email should be text only, if you need to make it pretty send an attachment.

[reboot]

I don't use Outhouse express, so I have no idea how to get it to text only.
You probably will get email in the format it was sent, but you CAN change it to send text only.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks reboot, that's what I thought.

[Tuf]

With Outlook you can set it display text only. More and more of the people I deal with are sending HTML mail. I send an auto response asking them to communicate with me in plain text only. If they tell me their ads are HTML only I then ask them not to send me ads by email.

The guys her are absolutely correct, the beauty of email is the fact that it cuts to the chase and just spits out what needs to be said. If you make it more complicated and send it to me it will likely go to the "deleted items folder".

[babylon5guy]

Thanks Tuf, I'll check it out. I suppose it doesn't bother me that much. If I used if for business it would. A lot of people send me humorous emails that use HTML so I guess I'll keep it. If it becomes a problem I'll switch to text only.

[wintomato]

If you go to tools/options/send/ down the bottom is 'mail sending format' which you can change to plain text. But I guess you probably spotted that already. I'll check out how to change the receiving part.

[babylon5guy]

Thanks wintomato, yeah I did see how to send it in plain text but I didn't see anything about recieving it that way.