on Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 08:38:33AM -0700, Huang, Ya (ya.huang@PFIZER.COM) wrote: > > Hi there, > > A few months ago, I got an email telling me that my post looks > different than others, it has small font. Recently Karsten also > suggested me to change my email to plain text format since html often > makes trouble. > > My problem is that my outlook out mail format to has already been set > to 'plain text', but the email sent out is still html format. I swear > I did it long time ago, and here is how I did it:

Editorializing first.

<soapbox>

We've witnessed a horrific event, a week ago Tuesday. It didn't come without warning -- this nation has experienced terrorism attacks for most of the past decade, including previous attacks and attempts on its own shores. And it wasn't unimaginable. For the X-Files buffs in the crowd, an episode of the spinoff show The Lone Gunman featured a plot in which terrorists planning on slamming an airliner into the World Trade Center were thwarted.

In a similar vein, the problems associate with email clients which execute untrusted content with no intervention from the user, particularly when such clients are widespread and provide a fertile monoculture on which to host hostile attacks, have been known for years. Attacks to date have largely been crude pranks, the constant theme running through the Monday-night quarterbacking of the latest MS Outlook email exploit: ILoveYou, Melissa, Marijuana, Kournikova, Cartolina, SirCam, nimda, ... is how trivial it would be for the worms to be modified to be truly destructive.

We had one wakeup call last Tuesday. What are the rest of you waiting for? This war has been escalating since 1999 and before. Your email system need not be the fastest way to turn your systems against yourself.

Do you really want to be in the position of explaining to your boss, employees, customers, and shareholders, with the smoking wreck of your datacenter in the background, how three years and more of advance notice wasn't sufficient to avert disaster?

</soapbox>

> In outlook, go to 'tools' menu, then 'options' then choose 'plain > text' for mail format.

My understanding is that this should do it. I haven't used Outlook in well over two years, not sure where the current settings are.

A friend has provided the following tips for normalizing Outlook mail:

Fixing quoting problems with Microsoft Outlook

As a large number of people use Microsoft Outlook, ("Outlook is a security hole that also happens to be an e-mail client", Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols [1]) despite the many security exploits associated with the program, to say nothing of its flouting of Internet mail standards, I've assembled the following directions to achieve a closer conformance with Internet mail standards. To set linewrap, quote character, and non-HTML mail preferences:

From the "Tools" menu, chose "Options...". To set Plain Text as the default format:

Click the "Send" tab. Under "Mail Sending Format", select "Plain Text".

To wrap lines at 72 characters:

While still on that same tab, click the "Plain Text Settings" button to bring up the "Plain Text Settings" dialog. Edit the value of the "Automatically wrap text at __ characters, when sending" field to 72.

To set the prefix character:

While still on the "Plain Text Settings" dialog, ensure that the "Indent the original text with __ when replying or forwarding" field is checked, and that "> " is selected in the drop box. (Both should be so by default.)

Thanks to Dan Martinez for this information.

-------------------- Notes

1. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols "The best way to stop 'ILOVEYOU' is to stop using Outlook." Sm@rt Reseller. http://membrane.com/security/secure/Microsoft_Outlook_Express.html

> I've talked to our IT department, and they couldn't figure out what > went wrong. > > Any idea? > Thanks > Ya Huang

-- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html