How to Always Send Outlook Emails in Plain Text Format for Specific Contacts

If someone can only receive emails in Plain Text, it will be troublesome for you to change the email format every time when sending emails to them. This article will teach you to make Outlook auto send emails in Plain Text to the specific contacts.

As we all know, the emails in Plain Text doesn’t support pictures, text formatting, background and stationary. Therefore, if you send emails in HTML format to the recipients who can only receive emails in Plain Text, something wrong will occur. For example, the pictures will be removed and even be converted into unreadable codes. Hence, in order to prevent the inaccurate cases, you should ensure that the emails sent to the specific contacts are always in Plain Text format. Undoubtedly, it will be cumbersome to manually change the email format. Actually Outlook has native support to always send Plain Text. The concrete operations are up to your Outlook versions. Here we will introduce them in detail.

Send Emails in Plain Text to Specific Contacts in Outlook 2007 & 2010

1. To start with, launch Outlook and switch to Contacts pane.
2. Then locate and double click on the target contact who can only receive Plain Text. In the open Contact window, you can move your cursor onto the email address.
3. Next in the emergent Contact Card, click on the last icon and select “Outlook Properties” from the drop-down list.
4. After that, in the newly popup “Email Properties” dialog box, click the down arrow in the “Internet format” field and opt for “Send Plain Text only” from the drop down list.
5. Finally click “OK” button.

Provided that you’re using Outlook 2013 or 2016, you will be unable to find the “Outlook Properties” option. You should firstly edit the registry keys to make this feature visible. Follow the steps below:

Send Emails in Plain Text to Specific Contacts in Outlook 2013 & 2016

1. At the very beginning, you should exit the Outlook and go to “Start Menu”.
2. Then in the search box, type “regedit” and press “Enter” key button.
3. In the popup “Account User Control”, select “Yes”.
4. Next you will get access to Registry Editor Window. Now you need browse to the following key path: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” > “Software” > “Policies” > “Microsoft” > “Office” > “<version>” > “common” > “contactcard”, and find the “TurnOffHoverFunctionality” value in the right pane.

Note: For “<version>” key, Outlook 2013 refers to “15.0”; Outlook 2016 refers to “16.0”.

5. After that, double click on the “TurnOffHoverFunctionality” value and change the value data to “1”.
6. Next click “OK” and exit the Registry Editor.
7. Later go back to the Outlook Contacts pane and open the target contact.
8. Right click on the email address field and from the context menu, you can see the “Open Outlook Properties” option.
9. After selecting it, you will get the “E-mail properties” dialog box as well. Now you can change the Internet Format, like the following image.

Don’t Panic about Outlook Issues

Outlook is vulnerable to malfunction. In other words, frequent Outlook issues are common. Hence, it is advisable to stay calm whenever suffering them. In general, you can start Outlook in safe mode. If Outlook can work properly, it is likely that the reading pane or third party add-ins is to blame. Or if the issues persist, there are great chances that you’re subject to corrupted Outlook PST email. In this case, you can make use of a robust repair tool, such as DataNumen Outlook Repair.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair corrupt SQL Server data and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com