What caused the problem A potted history.
There are two main reasons with associated benefits for configuring Microsoft Outlook Express to send text only messages. It makes sending e-mail both safer and cheaper.
Sending safer e-mail
As explained on the page encouraging safer file transfer several friends recently had their PCs attacked by Kakworm which, along with similar ‘viruses’ is commonly transmitted within the HTML version of the e-mail that the infected PC sends. If all PCs on the internet were kept meticulously clean of infection this would not be a problem. Alas, it only takes a few careless users. So it behoves us all to adopt safe e-mail practices.
Safety advice: Apart from avoiding Windows PCs for e-mail (which is normally what the author does) the user should:
- maintain and run current and appropriately configured anti-virus software to trap incoming ‘viruses’ and to scan attachments before sending. (Click for advice)
- set the e-mail client, especially the vulnerable Outlook Express to send text messages only and so avoid forwarding this kind of ‘virus’. (See below)
If one needs to send an HTML file for a particular reason it can be attached to the e-mail message in the normal way after scanning it to ensure it contains no nasty surprises.
Save money and time
Greatly reduce e-mail traffic, save time and money, and keep friends by configuring Outlook Express to send text messages only. ‘Keeping friends’ is mentioned because it does strain relationships a bit when the innocent receiver is continually bombarded with two versions of all mail that one sends.
Outlook Express as normally configured generates and sends an HTML (Web page) version of the text of the e-mail message. The HTML version is larger than the original so the whole size of the double message is more than twice what it needs to be. This makes sending and receiving e-mail a much lengthier and more expensive task than it should be.
Users in many places (e.g. United Kingdom, some parts of rural Australia) have timed telephone links to the Point of Presence of their Internet Service Provider. The way the two major carriers in Australia are positioning themselves at the moment could easily lead to a redefinition on ‘local’ so that most could have timed calls. Even without timed calls many Internet Service Providers charge for the time online. (Hence the recent popularity of ‘Free’ ISP services!) Keeping e-mail transmission time to a minimum makes good sense as well as being good etiquette.
Some reasons why Outlook Express sends both versions of the message are given later in the section What caused the problem. Primarily it is to allow messages to include formatting and effects such as italics which are not possible in normal text files. However 95% of the HTML sent has no such enhancement, nor is it needed. The most frequently seen examples of the use of e-mail with eye-catching effects are the unsolicited advertising messages that are sent by spammers as attached HTML files.
Savings advice: Save sender and receiver time, money and frustration by:
- configuring Outlook Express to send text messages only.
Using the same principle of keeping the size of e-mail messages as small as possible it is poor etiquette to attach large files to e-mail. Everyone knows that it is always when one logs on to check mail urgently that someone has sent a 300K attachment! More advice on sending big files can be found here.
General Moral: For safety and savings configure Outlook Express to send text messages only.
Configure Outlook Express
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The information given here simply advises users of Outlook Express how to configure it to send text only messages. Most experienced users already know and will have done this.
The images seen here are taken from Outlook Express (version 5.50) from Microsoft Windows Me. Earlier versions from Windows 95 or 98 are similar.
Step 1 — Select the configuration options from Outlook Express
After loading Outlook Express:
- Click on the Tools item of the top menu bar. (Figure 1 — A)
- Then click on the Options … item. (Figure 1 — B)
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Figure 1 Select Options |
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Step 2 — Set the Send options for Outlook Express
On the Options panel displayed after Step 1:
- Click the Send tag of the menu bar. (Figure 2 — A)
- Set both the Mail Sending and News Sending Format by clicking the Plain Text buttons. (Figure 2 — B & C)
- Check (tick) or uncheck the boxes according to preference. It is recommended that the ‘Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent’ box is left unchecked.
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| Figure 2 Set sending format |
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Step 3 — Configure the Plain Text Settings
While the Options panel (Figure 2) is displayed:
- Click, in turn, on the Plain Text Settings for Mail and News. (Figure 2 — D & E)
- Set the items as seen in Figure 3. Namely the Message format to MIME (Figure 3 — A) and the Encode Text item to None (Figure 3 — B). Click OK on this panel for both the Mail and News.
- In the case of News Sending Format the user may prefer to set the Message format to Uuencode as this format is recognised by older News reading clients.
- Click OK at the bottom of the Options panel (Figure 2) to complete setting Outlook Express.
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| Figure 3 Plain Text Settings |
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The following notes are the author’s (obviously debatable) analysis of the reasons for Microsoft’s use of Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) as a portable document format.
How did we get HTML for e-mail messaging when it is not suitable?
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Last Updated on: 26 September 2025
