Strip HTML email in Outlook into plain text

Plain text is more secure, and faster for view­ing. Here's a pretty fool-proof way of get­ting your Out­look to auto-convert all incom­ing HTML emails into plain text.

Want to auto­mat­i­cally con­vert all HTML email that is sent to you, into plain text?

First, this is secure as many of the worms and bugs rely on HTML script code. One good exam­ple could be the need­less adver­tise­ments or images sent inside spam (junk) emails. When you so much as view an email inside your email soft­ware, the sender's web­server gets a "stamp" of you hav­ing accessed the image. This of course does not hap­pen with plain text, because there's no image, so there is no inad­ver­tent "access".

Sec­ond, it is also a bit faster to down­load and view email that doesn't have all the unnec­es­sary frills of HTML email (tables, bold, ital­ics etc).

.

Microsoft Outlook (Part of Microsoft Office) To strip HTML into plain text in Microsoft Outlook:

DISCLAIMER: If you use regedit incor­rectly, you may cause seri­ous prob­lems that may require you to rein­stall your oper­at­ing sys­tem. I can­not guar­an­tee that you can solve prob­lems that result from using regedit incor­rectly, use the fol­low­ing pro­ce­dure at your own risk. It works but you have been caveated.
  1. Start | Run | regedit
  2. Find this key:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice
    10.0OutlookOptionsMail
  3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWord Value.
  4. With the new Dword value selected, type ReadAsPlain.
  5. Double-click the new value to open it. In the Value Data box, type 1, and then click OK.
  6. Click OK, and then quit Reg­istry Editor.
  7. Just to be sure, close Out­look and restart it.

From now on, all your HTML email mes­sages will show up as sim­ple text. After you turn on the "Read as Plain Text" fea­ture, users notice the fol­low­ing changes:

  1. The changes are applied to the pre­view pane and open messages.
  2. Pic­tures become attach­ments to avoid loss.
  3. Dig­i­tally signed mes­sages are not affected.

Microsoft Outlook Express (Part of Microsoft Internet Explorer) To strip HTML into plain text in Microsoft Out­look EXPRESS:

  1. Start Out­look Express, and then on the Tools | Options.
  2. Click the READ tab, and then click to select the "Read all mes­sages in plain text" check box under Read­ing Messages.
  3. Click OK.
Enabling plain text in Outlook Express

That's all there is to it!

  • / snip­tools

    Note: This may work only with Out­look 2002 and onwards, and only if you have SP 1 installed. (If you don't, then you prob­a­bly shouldn't be using Outlook!)

  • chris

    nice arti­cle, thanks. hav­ing this func­tion­al­ity in out­look is very very useful!

    btw i am work­ing on a new email client these days called thun­der­bird, from the mozilla group. it has bayesian rules built in. you can take a look at some good reviews of it here -

    http://www.nidelven-it.no/articles/introduction_to_thunderbird_5

  • / snip­tools

    Hi Chris,

    I've tried Thun­der­bird and although it seems like a good attempt, it is far from being a seri­ous con­tender for a seri­ous email client.

    It is very, very slow in com­par­i­son to Out­look, Eudora, Poco­mail etc. There's no archiv­ing, which for me is absolutely crit­i­cal because I carry a lot of email from the past 5 years or so, and can­not afford to have it in my main mbx. After just a cou­ple of days play­ing around with it, you also real­ize that it is basi­cally Netscape Mail with a new inter­face and is just not as con­fig­urable as Out­look or Eudora.

    Interface-wise, I still have to see some­thing that bet­ters Out­look. Poco­mail came close, IMHO, but I want my email soft­ware to look a lot sim­pler than that and they just don't have an easy "skin" yet.

    Just my 0.02. Glad you found this tip useful!

    –Shanx

  • Vine­gar

    For other email soft­ware here's an inter­est­ing web­site
    http://expita.com/nomime.html

  • Gpo4

    nice... :)

  • huh?

    I don't have a Mail sub­folder under Options.…

  • / snip­tools

    OS? Out­look ver­sion? What folder DO you have?

  • Brent

    I like this tip. How­ever, I wish there was a way to have a tog­gle in Out­look 2002 so that you can go back and forth between HTML and Plain text because I get some busi­ness e-mails that have some for­mat­ing that makes the mes­sages eas­ier to understand.

    Maybe some­one knows of a way to have a tog­gle like Out­look Express does!

  • Maya

    Thanks! This works for Office 2003 as well and works like a charm. Just replace the "Office/10" in your code to "Office/11" which denotes the new ver­sion, of course. Thanks!!

  • Philipp

    Hi,

    I tried the sug­ges­tion above to get rid of auto­mat­i­cally down­loaded pics in HTML mails. How­ever, for me it doesn't work.
    I'm using Win­dows XP, Ser­vice Pack 2, Out­look 10, IE 6.0.
    I cre­ated the DWORD ReadAs­Plain and assigned it the value 1 exactly as explained above.
    Has anobody sug­ges­tions what else I could try?

    Cheers,
    Phil

  • Kevin

    It did exactly what it said on the box

    it worked for me

    thanks for this use­ful tip

  • Zann

    Hi,

    I had/have a prob­lem with Out­look 2003. I can't work out how to solve it.

    Out­look takes about 5 min­utes to open any email with html for­mat­ting. Plain text emails are fine. How­ever the twist is that once a html for­mat­ted email is open the rest open fine. It is a fresh(ish) copy of Out­look and the machine should have no prob­lem. I am run­ning Win XP Pro.

    if you have any clues to what could help please email.

    For now I have used your trick to set all email to plain text but this is only a work around. I would pre­fer to be able to open html emails.

    cheers
    Zann

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