Hi all,
R5 client defaults to sending HTML and plain text for outgoing internet messages. When we rolled out R5, I left most client options in their default state. Later I found some problems with outgoing messages in HTML:
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Replies w/history and Forwards: original (previous) message headers (sender, recipient names and sublect line) look rather ugly, especially with long names - indents are different for each line, too many spaces between colomns.
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Users may format message with a ‘nice’ font, which is not available on the recipient’s workstation, making resulting message look different or even unreadable (when using Cyrillic fonts).
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Some companies does not allow incoming HTML messages, they only accept text-only parts.
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Some old mail programs does not support HTML messages.
If client is configured with “Plain text” for outgoing Internet messages, no above problems occur.
When rolling out R651, I made policy to configure clients with plain text for Intenret-bound message format. From my prospective, this would help to avoid problems above, plus, it seem to be common practice - most corporations use plain text only format for external correspondence. (Heh, most HTML messages I saw are spam messages).
Now I met a problem.
It was discovered that some finance and sales users were sending Excel worksheet fragments to external users using copy/paste menus (or Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V combination). In Lotus this produces a picture (!) with selected Excel fragment. When outgoing message format was changed to Plain Text using R651 policies, external recipients are not able to receive those pasted Excel pictures any more (it works only when format is set to HTML). So it looks that message conversion (Cd=>Mime) simply strips these pictures out, leaving text only portions of the letter.
Well, once discovered, I created an instruction to use Paste Special => Text Only menu to paste Excel fragments. But users complain that it is not comfortable, and not the way they did it earlier for a long time.
I am trying to argue that it is not good to send tables in pictures - recipient can only view/print them, but not edit, insert in the other spreadsheet document, etc.
Whell, now I would like to know the opinion of this Forum.
First, what you think about internet message format (HTML or plain text)?
Second, what’s your (or your users) favorite way to send Excel worksheet fragments?
Thank you very much, your input is highly appreciated.
Alex