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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.