I have been struggling with fonts in reply memo’s for some time now.
- The problem is as follows: When a reply (internetstyle or otherwise) is composed the font of the body part of the mail message is set to Default Monospace 10. The memo replying to is usually written in Outlook (Express) and formatted as plain text. I assume here that the Notes user is replying to part of the message and is inserting sentences in the body part.
The message is shown to the user as set in the user preferences, default fonts and/or ini setting ‘Display_font_adjustment = n’. There is no visual clue here for the user to notice that the font is different and small. The person receiving the message replied to (read: Outloook user), will receive a message with a very small fontsize and to the recipient the message is really unreadable, (assuming here that the textsize is set to medium - default setting).
In short: Outlook users receive reply messages badly formatted.
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Background: We discovered this problem as we have other offices not using Notes but Outlook as the mailclient. Outlook users receive reply messages from our offices (Notes users) in unreadable format. At first I did not take this seriously as all memo’s sent were correctly sized on the screen. (This behaviour can easily be reproduced by sending a message in Outlook Express, reply in Notes, send it back and open it in OE).
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Tried the following: I have changed the font size of the Body field and wBody field of the reply form in Designer. But this only formats the first paragraph of a reply memo, not the complete memo, or sentences inserted. I have looked at the Mime settings in the MTA and got very confused, as there are R4 and R5 MTA settings and server configuration settings, as well as inbound and outbound values. (I did change some of the fonts to Times New Roman 12pt, without any result so it seems.) And I have adviced the user to start a reply by selecting the message and formatting the text to Times New Roman. This is usually forgotten, as the text is presented on the screen ‘correctly’ and it is relatively time consuming to change the font (the user is not willing to format the reply text).
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Other info: We use Notes Client version 6.02 CF1 and Domino 6.02 CF1 (on W2K). Shortly we will migrate the client and Domino server to version 6.5, to make use of the Sametime functionality and the new mailtemplate. We have 50 odd clients and one server to maintain and only have 6 months worth of experience in the Notes environment. Our default font should be for all messages Times New Roman - 12pt (TNR 12pt).
*Questions:
Q1: How can we send out reply messages in the correct font and size? (Using client settings and/or server settings?)
Q2: If there are no settings, how can I create a command (or action) button or make use of an event to format the body part of the message to TNR 12pt. (I am learning designer -slowly-, mighty complex to an administrator… and need here detailed information on how to structure a command, solution, or script. I have not seen in my (red)books a command to format a field(?)).
Q3: Out of curiosity, how do all of you manage this ‘feature’? Do your users and/or Outlook recipients not complain?
Q4: Does anyone know of a ‘best practices document’ on how to style mail messages sent to non-Notes users?
Thank you for any answers you have,
Regards,
Harco Wubs.