Outlook 2007 users angry over Office 2007 HTML-e-mail changes

[Mr. Gibs]

Wow you can sure read an article but not copy and paste properly?

learn to format.

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Do you not understand that you can enable proper HTML rendering from within the options? The default however is using word.

[Sniper101]

Office 2007 to me, is great aslong as i can send and receive emails then it sure doesn't bother me. It's Quite easy to work around the HTML changes they have done anyway. If you can't live with it don't use it :) simple as pie.

[lol911]

Yeah, Rich text is pretty much what mails should use.

HTML that's for annoying ugly badly made greeting card mails and spam mail from gaming mailing lists.

the only peopel who use HTML over Rich text are the ones who somehow ended up with html by default and don't know any better or don't know how to change.

You must never have received an email in your life. Most websites use html emails to send our their newsletter, and businesses sends out mail formatted in html as well.

[tsahnocub]

Do you not understand that you can enable proper HTML rendering from within the options? The default however is using word.

How would you do that? I just looked through all the settings, and I couldn't see anything to change the rendering engine?

[+mrbester MVC]

..I work for the Ministry of Government Services, for the Government of Ontario, as a PKI / MyOPS support agent, and I constantly get emails from Tech Support, and higher level agency officials, and 99.9% off all email I get, even from Tech Support, is in HTML

Then they aren't power users, they just haven't switched it off (which makes them lazy users)

Most websites use html emails to send our their newsletter...

well, they shouldn't. That's what the frickin web is for. You send a mail saying "here's a link to the latest news on our site". It also saves bandwidth.

and businesses sends out mail formatted in html as well.

True. Amazon is good at that. Yet they are pretty much all offers for stuff, which could have been dealt with by plaintext links as above. There's absolutely no reason to send an invoice / purchase order / etc. as HTML because in order to receive that you must have been on the e-commerce site to begin with. You deciding not to print out an order confirmation web page if you want something with fancy formatting is your problem. Go back to the site and review your order if you need it that bad.

Do you not understand that you can enable proper HTML rendering from within the options? The default however is using word.

How would you do that? I just looked through all the settings, and I couldn't see anything to change the rendering engine?

QFT. If it isn't easy / obvious to change (and what is in Outlook, how many frickin settings to stop HTML email inbound or outbound?), there will be a lot more complaints becuase of the default of using a rendering engine that is ieven worse than Trident.

[Baked]

I love Outlook 2007......easier to use if you ask me.

As for the rendering engine pfft who cares........i hate HTML emails....if it cant be said in plain text emails then its probally not worth reading.

GOOD JOB MS - Security First for a change....WD

[+Biscuits Brown MVC]

I have to side with those not caring. When signing up for online newsletters I always specify plain text and I have Outlook only using plain text. If you are taking the time to make up an elaborate CSS/HTML email to send to me it you are wasting your time. I like the way information looks when printed in courier new. I can read what I need to read and while it may not look good, but I never have to worry about phishing and other junk.

[JoDaddy]

This is really a huge problem. For those who say that HTML isn't for email - HTML offers a much higher clickthrough rate over plain text. That means a lot of money to people like GAP, Microsoft, HP, Lexus, and the sort. To have their designers spending more time coding emails to ancient HTML standards is crazy. Looking forward to Office 2007 SP1. :crazy:

[Boeing 787]

Everybody in this thread is missing the point:

1. You will still receive spam it has no affect on that.

2. It won't stop others from sending you HTML designed email because they will be using other types of email clients like Outlook 2003 and Thunderbird, but when Outlook 2007 receives it, it will not display properly.

3. The rendering engine is poorly designed, slow and buggy and that is in plain text mode, html mode can cause cpu spikes that last for 5 minutes.

4. Outlook 2007 cannot send out properly designed HTML emails, they are scrambled which is going to cause a lot of headaches.

I believe it is better that the end user or admin has the choice to lock down which email mode is used and not chosen for us by Microsoft. Microsoft should have just prompted people to switch to plain test mode or rich text mode or maybe default to plain text mode and make users switch to html mode.

The point being the end user should be given the choice.

[+.Aaron Subscriber¹]

I personally have 0 complaints and have been using Outlook 2007 beta for a while. I love it. I do not understand what all the fuss is about.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

and get the DoJ and the EU back in our arses again because we requiere users to install another MS app so they can render their freaking emails? no thanks! :rolleyes: :cry: :no:

The IE6 engine is already installed on xp machines, its part of windows :p

It's much more complicated than that...

And another thing, this isn't more secure simply because it is not IE. It's more secure because the Outlook/Office team has full control over the code so they can lock it down in ways specific to their uses of it, and apply greater defense-in-depth strategies.

[selphj]

Gee, I've been using Outlook 2007 (full not beta) for a few days and I had no idea I was angry. I need to keep tabs on my emotions better. All this time I thought I really liked Outlook 2007.

[Boeing 787]

I personally have 0 complaints and have been using Outlook 2007 beta for a while. I love it. I do not understand what all the fuss is about.

The fuss is that they removed a properly working feature and replaced it with one that doesn't work properly.

Talking to a Microsoft Office employee I was told this was not planned. I guess they couldn't get IE6 and outlook 2007 to work properly together so that would require going to ie7 but most corps have yet to upgrade to ie7 so that means they needed some other way to render the html emails so they choose word 2007 since it would be included in the office 2007 suite.

The problem is that word 2007 can't render html properly, so it's by accident and not by design. It would be nice if we were allowed to choose the rendering engine like Outlook 2003.

Edited January 17, 2007 by hardgiant

[richter]

The fuss is that they removed a properly working feature and replaced it with one that doesn't work properly.

It works just fine here. I've received HTML email (invoice...) and it displayed ok to me. Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2007 will work just fine. If this is 5 year step backward, then older client will have no issues displaying emails sent by 2007 user. The only who complain are "email designers". I have yet to see any experienced computer user to send CSS email to me. The only ones I get were graciously forwarded email (read spam) from my friends who fall fall all kind of scams (get rich in 5 minutes by forwarding this email to 100 of your friends in next 30 seconds).

Talking to a Microsoft Office employee I was told this was not planned.

Hearsay.

The problem is that word 2007 can't render html properly, so it's by accident and not by design. It would be nice if we were allowed to choose the rendering engine like Outlook 2003.

Where exactly in 2003 are you allowed to choose rendering engine? I've used it for years and never saw that option. It only allows you to choose which format your emails will be composed in. You are thinking about option to compose email in World (RTF/HTML) or in Outlook (Plain text)?

Edited January 18, 2007 by richter

[excalpius]

HTML email is lame. Good riddance.

[MrCobra]

Gee, I've been using Outlook 2007 (full not beta) for a few days and I had no idea I was angry. I need to keep tabs on my emotions better. All this time I thought I really liked Outlook 2007.

That's priceless.

[*John*]

HTML email is lame. Good riddance.

:yes:

[PyX]

What the hell... Okay I really hate IE and don't recommend it to anyone but in cases like this, it's better than nothing.

[User6060]

I honestly didn't notice a difference when I upgraded from 2003 -2007 :huh:

[Echilon]

Seems strange to take a step back like this. Most HTML emails usually have a 'view link in browser' link though.