Neil Merton

Read Outlook Messages As Plain Text

I’ve been tasks with creating quite a few email campaigns recently (all above board, honest guv’). One issue that I came across was to have the ability to read the emails I’ve been sending myself as tests as plain text. Why do you ask?

Well, ColdFusion’s cfmail function allows you to send both HTML and plain text versions of emails, which is great. I needed to find out whether I actually needed two different versions or whether Outlook (and hopefully other email clients) will automatically convert HTML emails into something readable as plain text. In true Microsoft fashion, you actually have to add a DWORD to the registry settings for Outlook in order to do this. Close Outlook (if it’s open) and here what to add to the registry, via Regedit:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\1X.0\Outlook\Options\Mail

Add a new DWORD of READASPLAIN with a value of 1.

Now when you view emails in Outlook they will be displayed as plain text by default, with the option of viewing emails as HTML if required.