Email coding?

[Doctordestiny]

I probably won't explain this properly as I'm unsure of the terms. I hope it's understood.

I've set up my email style with a signature file with type that's sized differently and a different font than the body of the email. I'm also to use any style that's available in Outlook, which is my email program.

When someone replies to an email and I reply back, sometimes I lose all of the coding (?) and their email back to me and my reply is in plain text. I'm also unable to make any changes to fonts or sizes because all of my options are greyed out.

Is this caused by something at their end or is there something I can change at my end to fix this? Can I change coding in Outlook to fix this?

[Bobblehead]

Many email clients enforce plain text. That gets rid of all the formatting you put in place (other than line breaks).

Nothing you can do about it - it is a setting on their side; either their email system or client.

The reason you see the setting are greyed out is because Outlook realizes their response was plain text. You can re-enable those settings by changing to Rick Text Formatting (RTF) or HTML, but if they have their account and/or client set to plain text, your special formatting will disappear.

There is an argument out there that all email should only be plain text. That removes some of the many virus possibilities that have existed in the past. If your email client can act like a web browser then it must get all the same patches as a web browser. By enforcing plain text then that prevents any malicious code from ever possibly happening.

[Swayze11]

In Outlook 2007:
Tools -> Options -> Mail Format tab -> Signatures -> In the right side of this box there should be a "Choose Default Signatue"... make sure the Replies/forwards drop down box is selected to the signature you saved.

Maybe I am reading this wrong?

[old-fart]

You are likely using either HTML or RTF e-mail, and they are likely using plain text. If they reply to your e-mail with a plain text e-mail, you won't be able to reply back to them in HTML (well, you could with some fancy moves, but it would pointless since they'll see plain text anyway).

At least, I'm pretty sure that's what is happening.

Edit: What Bobblehead said...

[llama64]

Maybe I gained this from working with a few crotchety old IT guys but straight text is fine for email. There is no actual need to do anything more fancy.

I'd make sure your signature looks good in plain text before doing anything special to it.

Attach a document if you need to send something with more formatting.

[Doctordestiny]

Okay, I got it. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about it. That's too bad as my sig file is quite nice and represents me (and my business) well. Thanks for the info, guys.

[ken0042]

When I get an email; and the signature takes up a lot of space, I often convert it to plain text to help keep the email size down. Usually if there is graphics in the signature or stationary which have nothing to do with the email.

Not sure if this might be part of what's happening to you.