Read Outlook messages using plain text

Outlook 2010 Read as plain text

Microsoft Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Outlook 2010 all support reading messages in plain text format. You can configure this in Tools, Options, Email options (Outlook 2003), Tools, Trust Center in Outlook 2007 or File, Options, Trust Center, Email Security in Outlook 2010.

When Read-as-plain text is enabled in Outlook 2003, 2007, or 2010,  the Infobar will say if the message was converted to plain text. You can easily switch individual messages to HTML by clicking in the Infobar and displaying the message as HTML.

If you are using Office XP SR1 update (does not work on earlier builds), you now have the ability to force all incoming messages to be displayed as plain text in both the preview pane and opened message form. This is done with a registry key that stops the HTML engine from rendering the content.

• Outlook 2003 includes a “read as plain” feature and improves on it. You can toggle HTML back on per message when you click in the Infobar.

Unlike other utilities, such as zapHTML, the message is not actually converted to plain text (or RTF) and if you want to see it in HTML format, you can either remove the key or view it on another computer.

The key is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
Add a DWORD of READASPLAIN=1

Now all messages will be displayed as plain text.

Don’t want to edit the registry? Use Attachment Options to set this key for you.

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Tags: plain text

This article is filed under Email, How to..., Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010.
Last reviewed on Aug 8, 2011