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Eudora Tip #52/20-Sept-2000

Until recently email was just ordinary old plain text. No bold, no font choice, no pictures—just plain text. A year or two ago now, some email software started making it possible to include formatting. This is pretty and can produce very attractive emails. It can also cause all sorts of problems for the recipient and irritates some people enormously. Many people around the world use email systems which can’t handle this formatted text, and in the worst case your message is invisible to them. Nearly as bad is when they receive your one message twice—once as a normal message and once as “weird stuff” (HTML code).

Recent versions of Eudora give you the ability to send formatted text. To switch this option on go to the Special menu—Settings and scroll down to Fonts and Display. Check the box for Show Formatting Toolbar.

Now when you make a new message you can choose colours, fonts and many other options from the extra toolbar.

Now, having told you how to do it, I strongly suggest that you don’t. Definitely don’t send formatted messages to mailing lists or to people whose email system you don’t know. Keep it for friends and family and never just assume that your recipient will be able to view a formatted message.