Outlook and Excel formatting - take it easy! Feb27 '07

People sometimes send me emails that look "pretty," by adding custom fonts, colors, and designs. In Outlook, this comes across as a rich text email.

Excel documents also get face-lifts, with colorful column headers, larger fonts, and columns and rows that are expanded or collapsed to varying degrees.

I personally find this annoying.

Whereas I understand the urge to do this (everyone has the right to express their creative freedom), sometimes people go overboard, and the information becomes harder to find.

Perhaps it's because I am a technical guy, and I'm used to looking at black and white rows of data, and boring fonts.

In any case, I try to avoid looking at people's custom formatting, by simply turning it off (in Outlook), or removing formatting once I open the document (in Excel).

I want to make sure I'm viewing only the information, and not the presentation.

In Outlook, make sure any incoming email is set to Plain text. This way, you'll avoid those fancy, rich text emails.

Screenshot of Microsoft Outlook preferences

In Excel, go to Edit > Clear > Formats. This is usually the very first thing I do when opening someone else's Excel doc.

Screenshot of Microsoft Excel

Categories: Annoyances , Excel , Outlook

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matthom is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

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