Outlook allows you to save outgoing emails that you're composing as an HTML
file using the Save As function. That file (characterized by an .htm
extension) can later be imported into other email programs in order to send
the message out with the desired Rich Text or other HTML content.
I use a dedicated emailing program (MailThem Pro) to send out my emails one
at a time to all the people on my mailing list. That program requires an
HTML file for it to properly format the email in Rich Text before sending it
out. So I compose the emails in Outlook in HTML format (as opposed to Plain
Text) with all the Rich Text content I want (different fonts, boldface,
italics, etc.). I then save the formatted file as HTML and then import it
into MailThem Pro which sends out my formatted message to my mailing list.
However, the HTML code that is generated by Outlook using its Save As
function is so incredibly dense that a simple message of a few lines in
plain text can take up to 200k once it's encoded into HTML by Outlook.
Someone told me that what's happening is that the HTML encoder in Outlook
explicitly sets to its default value, every possible obscure tag in the HTML
standard, whether that tag or parameter is used in that message or not. So
the simplest of messages ends up with lines and lines of obscure HTML code
that sometimes cause unpredictable results in different computers. I have a
rudamentary knowledge of HTML, but I can't begin to decipher this code, it's
so obstruse! And several of my friends report very unusual effects from
opening my emails--from the message not opening at all, to the message
opening but not displaying any visible contents, to the message opening, but
crashing an unrelated application that was open on their computer. I have
pretty good virus protection on my computer, so I don't think I have any
sort of lurking virus or worm. I suspect it's this overly dense HTML code
that's generated by Outlook and perhaps choking the more primitive HTML
interpreters on certain computers. Is that possible?
Is there any way that the HTML encoder of Outlook could be altered to
generate a less "thorough" HTML implementation for such saved messages? Or
is there any other way around this problem? Are there any tools out there,
free or otherwise, that might give me a simpler HTML implementation of the
messages I compose in Outlook. By the way, if it makes a difference, the
version of Outlook I use is Outlook 2002.
I'd really appreciate any help or insight...

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Garret Swayne

www.garretswayne.com
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