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(?) Setup of Microsoft Outlook Express 5 for Sending of Clear Text

Answered By Chris Gianakopoulos

[Heather] We get so many people who send us perfectly good questions, in HTML, which drives some of our mailers crazy. It's not surprising that someone with a crippled Linux box would reach for a nearby Windows system to send the mail. So, here's some help for you. Utterly self serving, to help us get plaintext :)

(!) [Chris] Hey Heather,
I glanced at the March 2001 Linux Gazette and noticed your (subtle) request for the steps needed to set up my Outlook Express mailer to send clear text. I read in a textbook (circuits) that a promise made is a debt unpaid. I will recoin the phrase to "A request made is a response unpaid". Therefore, I will post you a response which attempts to provide a coherent step of steps to achieve our goal.
I actually executed these steps while typing the steps into a text file using vi for DOS. I use my Microsoft machine when I email late nights. I hope that this is coherent! Anybody can sanity check me, of course (that's what teams do -- review each other's work). Here are the steps.

Steps for Setting Up Microsoft Outlook Express 5 for Sending of Clear Text

  1. Start up Microsoft Outlook Express.
  2. From the "Tools" menu, select "Options".
  3. An Options dialog box will pop up.
  4. On the Options dialog box, select the "Send" tab.
  5. Under the "Mail Sending Format" section of the dialog box, select the "Plain Text" radio button.
  6. Press the "Plain Text Settings" button.
  7. A Plain Text Settings dialog box will appear.
  8. For message format, I select the "MIME" radio button.
  9. Check the "Indent the original text with" check box. This will cause any included original message to be indented and preceeded with a ">" sign.
  10. . Select "Automatically wrap text at" with 74 characters. (Ben Okopnik's suggestion to me).
  11. . Press the OK button of the Plain Text Settings dialog box.
  12. . I make sure that the "Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent" check box is unchecked.
  13. Press the OK button of the Options dialog box.
You're all set!
-------------------- End of Instructions ----------------------
The line lengths of the steps look short because I typed those steps into a text file, using vi, and I always keep lines less than 80 characters. I'm from the old days of using terminals (not ASR-33 teletypes although once I had a General Electric Terminet 300 TTY for a printer), so I avoid line wrap.
Thank you and Ben for the encourgement that you give. I'm still a cross between a soon to be Linux hacker and an embedded software hacker (they call me an engineer, but, I think that is questionable).
You are a kick-a## teem! Keep up the good work!
Chris G.

This page edited and maintained by the Editors of Linux Gazette Copyright © 2001
Published in issue 65 of Linux Gazette April 2001
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