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Hi!
I didn't know if I should put this in the official Windows Mail tutorial thread or here. I opted for here with the idea that it might not be so easily lost among 181 pages of comments. From the research I've been able to glean, my problem seems to occur in other email programs too, but it doesn't happen often enough that I've been able to find any fix for it; if there is any. So here is why I'm here.
I love that I've been able to keep Windows Mail on my Windows 7 Home 64 for many years. I have no use for programs like Outlook. I don't need all the bells and whistles. Programs like Thunderbird made me crazy. I just need the simple old Outlook Express that I started with years ago and the ability to have my two email accounts go into a single Inbox. I have no need to save "conversations", etc.
A strange problem has developed between myself and an email friend in the UK. She has a Gmail account that she uses through Microsoft Office Outlook 12. I'm using Windows Mail (from SevenForums) and my web mail server is through my internet cable company. (Time Warner/Charter). I do have Office 2003 Word and Excel on my computer. In the last couple of years, she will tell me that sometimes my emails reach her with red text in some of my email. I have read that changes in the font colors have happened, but nobody has figured out definitely why. Some of the posts I've read attribute the fault to Gmail. Others just don't know.
Through trial and error, I have made a few observations which I will note here. My friend is even less computer savvy than I am, so basically anything I've found is all on my end and getting her to confirm that the same or something different is happening on her end is impossible. I'm pretty sure I am making her eyes glaze over when I ask her to check on something on her end. So....
In no particular order:
On my end in Window Mail, I am not seeing any other font color except black, but she's seeing parts of my text in red. I pasted her replies to me in Word when she'd reply back with my original message that she was seeing in red. Colors did change for me in Word. But on my end, I'm not seeing red, I'm seeing a yellow font. Which coincidentally is the color selected by default in Word for highlighting text.
When I looked at the font settings in Windows Mail, sometimes the example of the font would show yellow even though I had selected black. Sometimes I could get it changed to back to black but it would only work for awhile. She'd tell me she was seeing red again; so I'd check the settings and they would be reverted back to yellow in spite of it being set on black.
I think that there might be a connection between pasting web content into the email if Word is also installed. (Again only guessing because of the yellow highlight color in my Word 2003.) I was able to determine that some of the latest text she was complaining about was text I'd pasted from web articles into my email drafts. Occasionally the yellow would drift into my real time typing which probably happened as I was editing around the copied newspaper text and strayed into the yellow range of the format.
I did figure out a way to make a new Word document with no formatting other than black text and I changed the yellow highlight color to none. I thought that if I could make it the default Word Document Template that would fix the problem with her emails. But it didn't.
I also tried replacing Microsoft Office 2003 with newer versions and/or no Office program of any kind or brand. That didn't work either.
I'll stop now. I'm sure I've messed around with this more than you care to listen to. But these are the major points, I think. I'm hoping this might strike a cord with somebody and they'd know exactly what I'm talking about and would know where to point me for a fix.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read through my sad story.
P.S.
In the meantime I've been using OE Classic and there have been no problems. OE Classic will be okay as an alternative, but I'd still rather use Windows Mail if it's possible.
I didn't know if I should put this in the official Windows Mail tutorial thread or here. I opted for here with the idea that it might not be so easily lost among 181 pages of comments. From the research I've been able to glean, my problem seems to occur in other email programs too, but it doesn't happen often enough that I've been able to find any fix for it; if there is any. So here is why I'm here.
I love that I've been able to keep Windows Mail on my Windows 7 Home 64 for many years. I have no use for programs like Outlook. I don't need all the bells and whistles. Programs like Thunderbird made me crazy. I just need the simple old Outlook Express that I started with years ago and the ability to have my two email accounts go into a single Inbox. I have no need to save "conversations", etc.
A strange problem has developed between myself and an email friend in the UK. She has a Gmail account that she uses through Microsoft Office Outlook 12. I'm using Windows Mail (from SevenForums) and my web mail server is through my internet cable company. (Time Warner/Charter). I do have Office 2003 Word and Excel on my computer. In the last couple of years, she will tell me that sometimes my emails reach her with red text in some of my email. I have read that changes in the font colors have happened, but nobody has figured out definitely why. Some of the posts I've read attribute the fault to Gmail. Others just don't know.
Through trial and error, I have made a few observations which I will note here. My friend is even less computer savvy than I am, so basically anything I've found is all on my end and getting her to confirm that the same or something different is happening on her end is impossible. I'm pretty sure I am making her eyes glaze over when I ask her to check on something on her end. So....
In no particular order:
On my end in Window Mail, I am not seeing any other font color except black, but she's seeing parts of my text in red. I pasted her replies to me in Word when she'd reply back with my original message that she was seeing in red. Colors did change for me in Word. But on my end, I'm not seeing red, I'm seeing a yellow font. Which coincidentally is the color selected by default in Word for highlighting text.
When I looked at the font settings in Windows Mail, sometimes the example of the font would show yellow even though I had selected black. Sometimes I could get it changed to back to black but it would only work for awhile. She'd tell me she was seeing red again; so I'd check the settings and they would be reverted back to yellow in spite of it being set on black.
I think that there might be a connection between pasting web content into the email if Word is also installed. (Again only guessing because of the yellow highlight color in my Word 2003.) I was able to determine that some of the latest text she was complaining about was text I'd pasted from web articles into my email drafts. Occasionally the yellow would drift into my real time typing which probably happened as I was editing around the copied newspaper text and strayed into the yellow range of the format.
I did figure out a way to make a new Word document with no formatting other than black text and I changed the yellow highlight color to none. I thought that if I could make it the default Word Document Template that would fix the problem with her emails. But it didn't.
I also tried replacing Microsoft Office 2003 with newer versions and/or no Office program of any kind or brand. That didn't work either.
I'll stop now. I'm sure I've messed around with this more than you care to listen to. But these are the major points, I think. I'm hoping this might strike a cord with somebody and they'd know exactly what I'm talking about and would know where to point me for a fix.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to read through my sad story.
P.S.
In the meantime I've been using OE Classic and there have been no problems. OE Classic will be okay as an alternative, but I'd still rather use Windows Mail if it's possible.
Last edited:
My Computer
At a glance
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
- Computer type
- Laptop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- HP
- OS
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
