Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Chapter 5. Mail Editors

Every time you create, respond to, or forward a message you interface with a mail editor. At first glance, the editor may seem straightforward. From the perspective of the interface itself, this is true (finding commands aside). But behind the scenes of the editor are myriad options that dictate how a message is formatted, where replies are saved, whether a read or delivery receipt is automatically requested, whether a signature is attached, and how a message is encoded. All of these options, and more, are available as global settings, providing you know where to look.

Many of Outlook’s messaging options are not something you need every day. Read receipts are a great way to confirm an important message was received and (perhaps) read by someone, but hanging a read receipt on every message you send is a waste of good Internet bandwidth and unnecessary for most everyday communications. A similar situation exists for message formats. Plain Text is good enough for the majority of everyday correspondence, but situations do arise when placing a picture or graphic in a message helps to convey an important point that words alone cannot.

For this reason, we’ve structured this chapter in two distinct parts. The first sections explain Outlook’s editor choices, message formats supported, the multitude of default options available, and how each one impacts the messages you send. Starting with Section 5.5 we show you how to override these default setting on a per-message ...