Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Outlook 2007 changing font and other formatting on reply or forward

Outlook 2007 is driving me crazy: I'll reply to an email using my default Outlook font of Calibri. Then I'll open the email I just sent from the "Sent Items" folder and find that the text I just wrote get converted to Time New Roman font. Also, the font for the text for all preceding emails was usually, but not always, also converted to Times New Roman. For example, in an email I'm looking at right now that has a long string of replies from different people, some people's signature line text got converted to Times New Roman, but some signature lines did not.


I've tried changing numerous settings in Outlook to prevent this switch, and have had with no luck. However, I did find one clue: After opening one of these troublesome emails, I went to the "Other Actions" menu and selected "View in Browser". This opened the email in my default browser (Internet Explorer 8), and my email reply looked just as I had sent it (see screenshot to the left).

I have noticed that when I send out these types of emails where the font appears to switch, when I get a reply from a recipient, I see that not only is the font of the message I had sent still changed, but it also appears changed when I view the email using "View in Browser".

For the record, here is a list of things I have already tried:
  1. Use message format HTML or RTF.

  2. Use or don't use theme.

  3. Change new message and reply default fonts to Verdana or Calibri.

  4. Use or don't use signature.

  5. Check or uncheck "Rely on CSS for font formatting".

  6. Check or uncheck "Save smart tags in e-mail".
Anyone have any ideas how I may be able to fix this switching problem?

14 comments:

The Ambiguous Frog said...

Not at all.

Unknown said...

A friend just directed me to check out a link that says that the problem may have to be fixed by my company's Microsoft Exchange administrator. I'll send an email to the administrator and see what happens.

The annoying part of this is not so much the font change, but that other formatting is zapped as well, including font color. So when an email thread contains text in different colors, and the colors provide some meaning such as who said what, then losing the coloring means losing valuable information.

David said...

Check out the following for other suggestions:

http://forums.techguy.org/business-applications/351008-help-outlook-2003-font-changes.html

Look at the last post in the thread at http://www.city-data.com/forum/computers/574999-arial-font-changes-times-new-roman.html

Another suggestion:
If you look under Tools -> Options -> Mail Format -> Fonts... you will see that you can set fonts for different types message formatting. Also, note the "Stationery fonts" section: you can override how a message formats its replies. I, for example, use the "Always use my fonts" option.
Also, your response to your users was pretty accurate. One thing worth noting is that a "Stationery style" (under Tools -> Options -> Mail Format -> Stationery Picker...) can override a message's composition font.

Since you mentioned the post about blackberry, I'm guessing it is your work account? Are others at work and that use a blackberry seeing the same thing? If not, maybe you should consider resetting your account. You can check with Vinnie (if you're still at Sony) on how to reset your client but it might be creating a new Outlook profile and see if that helps.

Hope one of those or the previous suggestions help.

Unknown said...

Hi David,

Thanks for the tips. Yes, Vinnie is still here, and it is my work account. I don't have a Blackberry (yet--and I'm not sure if I want one).

I haven't noticed the problem since the Microsoft Exchange server got upgraded over a recent weekend.

Alex said...

Once my friend opened MS Outlook and showed that all mails were damaged.But fortunately I advised him next utility-converting ost to pst files.Program solved his problems in a minute and free of charge.Besides tool showed how read Microsoft Outlook .ost files and extract all necessary data from it.

Ju Me said...

Hi Richard,

I am having the exact same issue with Outlook 2007 SP2 with a mailbox on Exchange 2007 SP2.

Have you find a fix for this?
Cheers

Michael Bihler said...

I have the exact same issue in some HTML-Mails that I receive from other Persons, that use Outlook 2003.
I am using Outlook 2007.

In the HTML-Source of the Mail I found a CSS-Style, that made me curious:
p.section1, li.section1, div.section1 {[some other styles.....] font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

There seems to be an issue with Word format templates, because the format template "section1" is included in these badly formated mails.

Please look if the mails you receive also include a similar template:
In Outlook 2007 click the arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the Styles section of the text format tab.
With a right mouse click you can delete this template.

After sending this mail your formattings should be preserved.

I wrote an Outlook-Makro for this job:

Sub RemoveFormatTemplateSection1()
If Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem.Class = olMail And Application.ActiveInspector.IsWordMail Then

On Error Resume Next
Application.ActiveInspector.WordEditor.Application.ActiveDocument.Styles("section1").Delete
On Error GoTo 0

' Use these Settings if you need
Application.ActiveInspector.WordEditor.Application.ActiveDocument.Styles("Standard").Font.Size = 11
Application.ActiveInspector.WordEditor.Application.ActiveDocument.Styles("Standard").Font.Name = "Arial"
End If
End Sub


This Makro can be added to Outlook 2007 via the ribbon customization button you see on the right hand of the undo button when you are editing a new mail.
(Using the "More Commands..."- Command)

Hope this solves your issue too,...

Michael

Unknown said...

Hi

I've added the code posted by Michael and it works fine as a seperate button.

Ideally I would like it to run automatically when the send button is clicked and have set this up, but I am getting an error when responding to meeting invites.
Is there any way for the code to check to see if the email is actually a meeting response and then not run?

Thanks

Matt

Alex said...

I use MS Outlook quite often in my work. One day I came upon an unpleasnt issue, which compelled me to use the Google. I was quite right in this decision. There I perceived a program which in future solved out my troubles. To my mind this application is quite good solution for this trouble - convert ost to pst file.

Anonymous said...

For Microsoft Office 2007
Click on FORMAT TEXT at the top
Then click CHANGE STYLES (it’s the far right hand corner at the top)
Click SET AS DEFAULT (it’s the last choice on that drop down menu)
If you haven’t already, choose your desired FONT and FONT SIZE for your current document before clicking SET AS DEFAULT.

Anonymous said...

I just double-checked this and it works for Microsoft Office 2007:
Click on FORMAT TEXT at the top
Then click CHANGE STYLES (it’s the far right hand corner at the top)
Click FONTS (2nd to last on that drop down menu) and choose your font (I choose Create New Theme Font and did Times new roman)
Click SET AS DEFAULT (it’s the last choice on that drop down menu)

HawkeyeTech said...

I did the following:

1.) Click REPLY
2.) Click FORMAT TEXT at the top
3.) Click ZOOM
4.) Check that 100% is chosen.

Worked great and associated itself with other replies to differing emails.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Hawkeyetech, it did the trick, I was going mad with the illegible fonts I was coming up with on my replies to my emails.

Tahn said...

I know this blog is a bit old now but the solution to the changing font is to go to your personal stationary options page, and there will be 'font' with a drop down next to it. change this to 'always use my fonts' then change the fonts to suit below.