Unable to see tables from Outlook senders.

Brad_Banerd · Post by **Brad_Banerd** » July 4th, 2006, 7:30 pm

Hello -

Most of my colleagues are using Outlook and they often send mails which when viewed in Outlook show a formatted table but when received in Thunderbird (or Eudora) show only plain text separated by line feeds.

I have checked many settings in TBird and turned on as much as possible without success and unfortunately none of my Outlook correspondents are able to explain to me what format they are using when they insert the tables.

Does anyone know what formatting Outlook might be using? I have assumed it is proprietary but don't really know.

Thank you: Brad

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Brad_Banerd · Post by **Brad_Banerd** » July 7th, 2006, 2:46 am

We have done further tests.

If we paste a table row from from Explorer into Outlook using HTML format "Paste Special" then send it to GMAIL and also to a Thunderbird client the row appears as a row in GMAIL but as a series of rows (each cell separated by line feeds) in Thunderbird.

If I then forward the mail back to GMAIL from Thunderbird then GMAIL also shows the series of rows, as if Thunderbird has actually removed some formatting in the process of reading the mail from Outlook.

Anyone have an idea of what is happening? Is there an option I have failed to set in Thunderbird regarding interpreting HTML?

Thanks: Brad

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Freee!! · Post by **Freee!!** » July 7th, 2006, 4:51 am

View - Message Body As - Original HTML

Brad_Banerd · Post by **Brad_Banerd** » July 7th, 2006, 5:54 am

Sorry. That function was already tried and does not seem to affect the view. Unless it is being blocked by another option? In fact I am leaving it on that option as the normal mode. And even so it would only be a viewing option and would not alter the message contents, which we seem to observe.

:Brad

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Michael_Jonath · Post by **Michael_Jonath** » July 7th, 2006, 5:20 pm

I have the exact same problem with Outlook tables not displaying properly in Thunderbird, and the View Message Body as HTML option does not help.
Anyone else have a suggestion?

This also applies for bullet-point indentation and formatting from Outlook messages, as Thunderbird seems to lose the structure, and display the messages as flat list of items with "*" as the bullet point.

These issues may be enough to make me switch to Outlook if there isn't a solution.

Brad_Banerd · Post by **Brad_Banerd** » July 30th, 2006, 11:00 pm

I just noticed on some inbound emails today that this problem seems to have been solved for my Thunderbird.
Thinking back, one of two changes are on my short list:

a) I upgraded to version 1.5.0.5 (20060719).
b) I tweaked account settings under "composition and addressing" to "compose messages in html format".

I don't know which change resulted in the "fix" and have not had time to test yet but emails from Outlook users with HTML content pasted by Microsoft apps are now showing as proper tables. My bet is on the upgrade, but have not seen anything in the release notes that is related.

Hopefully this might help my Thunderbird colleagues solve this problem on their systems.

Cheers: Brad

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