From time to time, Outlook users may experience formatting problems with their emails, like changes in fonts, spacing and bulleting. If you received a copy of your email that looks different from what you originally sent out, it's likely that Outlook couldn't process the formatting as intended.

There are a few setting configurations and best practice tips that can help prevent this.  

• Regularly Check Your Outlook For Any Updates

• Draft Your Emails Directly In Outlook

• Clear The Outlook Email Address Autocomplete Cache

• Setting Your Default To HTML And UTF 8

• What To Do If You're Still Having Problems?

Regularly Check Your Outlook For Any Updates

1. Open the Microsoft Outlook application on your desktop.
2. Click the "File" tab. This button is in the upper-left corner of the Outlook app window. 
3. Click "Account "on the File menu. 
   • On some versions, this option may be named Office Account.
4. Click the "Update Options" button under Product Information. 
5. Click "Update Now" on the dropdown menu. This option will check online for available updates, and install the latest software update on your computer.
   • If you don't see this option here, click Enable Updates first. The Update Now button should now show up on the menu.

Draft Your Emails Directly In Outlook

It is strongly advised to draft your email directly in Outlook instead of copying/pasting your content from another source.

Outlook uses Microsoft Word as the default editor for all emails. When Outlook can't pick up the format of external content it will send the email in Rich Text by default - which will strip the format of your emails. This is a known Outlook issue that will happen with or without the use of Street Context.

If you are copy+pasting any content, you should clear all external formatting before sending your email and build out any desired formatting fresh from within Outlook.

Highlight the text you need, and click Message > Clear all Formatting (or Clear Formatting).

Clear The Outlook Email Address Autocomplete Cache

If you have confirmed that your default is already set to HTML and UTF-8, sometimes Outlook will cache the formatting for specific contacts. To clear out your auto-cache, follow the steps below:

1. Open a new email message in your Outlook.
2. Type the first few characters of the email address you wish to clear from the cache until Outlook displays it.
3. When the entry appears in the list of suggested names, move your mouse pointer over the name until it becomes highlighted, but do not click the name.
4. When the "X" icon appears next to the highlighted name, click X to remove the email name from the list, or press the Delete key on the keyboard.

Setting Your Default To HTML And UTF 8

Ensure that HTML and UTF-8 are set as the default format for your outgoing messages in your Outlook. These are the recommended settings for anyone using Outlook to help with consistently formatted emails. 

To ensure that your default format is HTML:

1. Click on File > Options
2. Under Options, select Mail
3. Under Compose Messages, verify that HTML is selected in the drop-down where it says "Compose messages in this format"

To ensure that your encoding is set to UTF-8: 

1. Click the File tab in the top left corner of the Outlook 2010 window and click Options on the pull-down menu. A new window titled Outlook Options appears.
2. Click the Advanced heading on the left side of the window and then scroll to the International Options heading near the bottom.
3. Place a check in the box labelled Automatically select encoding for outgoing messages and click Unicode (UTF-8) on the drop-down menu.
4. Place a check in the box labelled Automatically select encoding for outgoing vCards and click Unicode (UTF-8) on the drop-down menu.
5. Place a check in the box labelled Allow UTF-8 support for the mailto: protocol.
6. Click OK.

What To Do If You're Still Having Problems?

Reach out to our support team! We're experts in helping with these problems. Our number one suggestion is always to keep your emails simple. Remember, folks read your emails because of the quality of content, not because of the using a range of colour, fonts, and formatting.