8 Comments

Microsoft uses Word to render Outlook emails

January 12, 2007 by in Stupid,Tech with 8 Comments

Due to the fact that I am free of working in any type of corporate environment which requires the use of Microsoft Outlook, I can not admit to being directly affected to the following discovery. However, I am well aware that there are Outlook users amongst our readers to the news is definitely applicable and worth noting.

Recent news conveys the horrid truth that Microsoft has decided to replace Internet Explorer with Microsoft Word as their rendering engine for HTML emails. As I am sure you are all aware, Internet Explorer is an internet browser. Microsoft Word is a rich text editor. Internet browsers understand CSS rules like float:left or float:right. Microsoft Word, no. See where I’m going with this? Background images, margin, padding… All out the window.

If you’re stuck in Corporate hell which requires the use of Outlook, prepare yourself for some very ugly emails – internal and external sources. All praise Microsoft!


  • chad

    I thought they had used word all along… not from poking or proding, but I always noticed if Outlook locked up you could kill “winword.exe” and sometimes that would save it from a complete crash…

    regardless… I hate it

  • http://www.pjllobell.com PVL

    Chad – True, but you could opt not to use Word for composing e-mails. You’d lose some options, but at the same time you’d reclaim 40MB of RAM. Not a bad idea if you always have Outlook open.

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    That’s so sad that if Outlook locked up you could kill Word and be back to normal… Sad, sad, sad. I couldn’t get this latest news to move towards Word rendering for HTML emails out of my head as I drove by the Microsoft Campus.

  • http://www.alifelessordinary.com/ Thomas J. Brown

    What’s wrong with using something like, oh, I don’t know, NOTEPAD? Why the hell do you even need backgrounds, floated images, and entire messages written in Comic Sans (or worse, Papyrus)? Give me plain text any day.

  • http://is.derekpunsalan.com Derek

    I don’t know what emails you’re getting, but who uses comic sans & papyrus? SPAM? I think I speak for everyone else saying that sometimes corporate emails come through with more important information than levitra or viagra.

  • chad

    @Derek

    I can tell you who uses Comic Sans… the people in marketing, or maybe the middle age product research mom of 4 with a love of the color pink of a baby blue pen stripped background with a size 18 font in a hand written classic script face.

    I’m not making this stuff up… when you work at a corporation interacting with all types of people you get some that are smart enough to figure out what all those check boxes and drop down menus do…. and they intend to use every single one of them.

    …. I have gotten emails I had to copy and paste into notepad just to read them :(

    @Thomas
    Amen brother

  • Stephen

    Open RegEdit and go to:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

    Set DWORD “ReadAsPlain” to “1″.

    Plain text. Just as email should be.

  • Paul

    Not sure how this is related but I have a customer who finds Outlook 2003 to hang when she clicks the MAIL FORMAT tab under Tools->Options. Just HANGS, and you have to shut down the Outlook processs to get free… I think this may be related to the use of Word or other “reader”… Any help gents??

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