| For a long time, email was but plain text — no pictures, no animations, no fancy fonts and no colors. While this is not as rich a display as the messages formatted using HTML, plain text email radically erases many of the security problems that plague email users. Worms, viruses and privacy-invasion by images that automatically download get no chance to do their harm if you just open and look at a plain text email. If want to thoroughly eradicate all problems that formatted emails bring, you can configure Outlook Express to display all messages in plain text only by default. To read all mail in plain text in Outlook Express:
- Select Tools | Options... from the menu.
- Go to the Read tab.
- Make sure Read all messages in plain text is checked.
- Click OK.
If you ever come across an email or newsletter that is unreadable in plain text and would certainly gain from being displayed using its formatting, you can view any email in HTML easily. If you have secured your making it display all mail in plain text, you may still find some messages to look and work better with their HTML formatting. Fortunately, you don't have to disable the plain text mode protection to enjoy messages that way. Outlook Express lets you decide per message which format you want to see it in, always defaulting to plain text, though. To view a message in HTML formatting in Outlook Express:
- Select View | Message in HTML from the menu.
If you switch to HTML frequently, you could also remember the keyboard shortcut and handily
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