No reply text in Outlook reply.

[DAMJR]

I use Outlook 2002. I use a cable modem and a router in my home LAN.
When I get reply messages from government employees, their actual text usually does not appear. However, occasionally, when I open the reply a second time, I CAN see their reply. The only common feature of these messages that I can see is that they use Lotus notes as their email client. Their email addresses are not formatted the same, so I don't think that is triggering anything in Outlook. (Their format is: @fs.fed.us and @nps.gov)

I have looked and looked through my Outlook settings and cannot figure out what is blocking the text. I do see my original message in the reply.

Any ideas?

 

[JockMullin]

Since they are replying to your message, what message format are you using when sending? If it is html or rtf, try using plain text. They should reply in kind.

When you open one of these messages and the text is invisible, if you do CTRL-A (select all) does that make the text visible)? If you then do CTRL-C (copy) and open notepad and do CTRL-V, does the text appear in notepad?

I'm thinking there is a text color incompatibility making the reply invisible (eg white on white).

Jock

 

[DAMJR]

Jock, Thanks for your ideas. I send messages in rich text. I'll change to plain text and see if that helps.

I understand your idea of copying and pasting the reply message (and I did take a minute to try it), but there is no space at the top of my original message. It's not like there is a reply with blank space at the top of my original.

Thanks, again.
Dward

 

[DAMJR]

I just discovered another wrinkle in this issue. I tuned on Auto Preview and I can now see the reply text (at least the first 3 lines of it). However, when I actually open the message (double click to view entire message), the reply text is not there. There is no blank space above my original message. All that I can see is my original message.

 

[JockMullin]

So the reply text is most likely there, but not being displayed. It looks like Lotus notes is not formatting the rtf reply in a way your version of Outlook can render properly.

I know nothing about Lotus notes, but it sounds like reverting to the lowest common denominator (plain text) is likely the way to go. RTF is I believe a MS concoction and as such possibly not handled well by all email programs.

Jock

 

[DAMJR]

I sent a message using plain text. I can read the reply, but the original message was not included in the reply. I will need to find out if the client on the government computer is set to not include the original when replying. I think I'm getting closer, but it is frustrating, for sure.

 

[JockMullin]

That proves there is likely a version problem in the RTF specs in the two systems. RTF is problematic because it is MS proprietary. The current version (1.9 I think) was released after Outlook 2002 and I am not sure if 2002 version supports the current spec. MS has announced that RTF will no longer be supported by Office 2010, so it is definitely in the category of endangered specifications. It is also very limited by being 8-bit.

You might want to test HTML - it is much more likely to be compatible and gives you all the formatting options you might need.

Jock

 

[DAMJR]

The mystery seems to be solved. When I send email messages in plain text or HTML, the replies contain the text of the reply message.

Thank you very much for your help with this.

 

[JockMullin]

Great, glad to hear it is sorted.

Jock