Outlook 2003 reply text color
 

I've looked everywhere in the options to change this - I usually can figure this kind of thing out on my own but I give up on this one. Maybe someone here knows the answer....

Everytime I hit reply to an email in outlook 2003 it picks a new color for my text. It drives me nuts! Sometimes I am writing back in weird purple tones, sometimes in light blue you can barely see on the screen. So I have to go up and change the color to black almost every email I send. I know I can switch my client to use text only instead of html but there are reasons I would like to keep it as html by default.

I found an option to make fonts always black and made the change from auto to black but it didn't make any difference on replies. Anyone know where to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

You already tried the configuration at:

tools>options>mail format>fonts ?

That's where I can change my reply colour.

Yes - but it didn't seem to make any difference. I'm at a loss.

I just went there and changed it to bright red just to be sure... and it still didn't take effect.

Well, that (Tools/Options/Mail Format/Fonts) works for me - what format is the mail. It sets the right colour if the incoming mail is html, but has no effect if the incoming is plain text...

http://members.optusnet.com.au/djmwo...FontColour.jpg

You have used this option, haven't you?

Yep thats exactly where I made the setting to be black everytime. Maybe its a bug in my install?

Is your email set to Rich Text Format, Plain Text or HTML?

Tools --> Options --> Mail Format tab to see

HTML, and I would like to keep that way if at all possible.

I finally fixed this. I had to turn off word as my html editor. I don't know if that will affect other things though.

Anyways, as soon as I did, the setting change that Spindles shows on the screenshot started to work.

Thanks

Know it's been about 6 years - but I was having the same problem and had a slightly different solution required. So just in case anyone else finds this ...

Start a new email and go to Tools - Options - General - Email Options

In the E-mail Signature tab click on your affected signature. Select the affected text to set the font and click the font colour icon to set the required colour, but (and this is the important bit) DO NOT SELECT AUTOMATIC. There is a distinct difference between Automatic and Black (on the top left of the pallette)!

The actual bug comes from replying to RTF emails coming in, which then takes _some of_ the email format from the original email, including font colour. So if the originator went for a trendy indigo background with ivory text, then your reply picks up the ivory text (although not necessary the inigo background ...). For some reason the options in personal stationary only apply to new text and not your pulled through sig ...