A Plain Text message.
If a message recipient has complained about getting gobbledygook when you've sent them an HTML message, try using Plain Text format the next time you send them a message. Plain Text format is a very predictable format. All e-mail programs understand it; and, as we just mentioned, Plain Text produces the smallest message files of Outlook’s available formats. This means that the recipient of your Plain Text message will be able to:
- Read your message, and
- Access your message as quickly as their system will allow.
There's a benefit for you, too: if you save your sent messages, Plain Text messages will take the least amount of disk space to store.
The downside? With Plain Text, you can't use anything fun, like bold, italics, or color.
Tip You can change some settings for Plain Text messages, such as the default font and the number of characters allowed in a line before the text wraps. We'll tell you how to change the font in the practice session at the end of this lesson and we'll talk a little about line length in the Quick Reference Card at the end of this course.
