Post by Rodimus Prime on Aug 6, 2011 21:08:51 GMT -5
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what we mean when we ask that applications be emailed to us in text format. By 'text', we do not mean that there have to be letters, numbers, and other text elements in the email (although you certainly need those, too). Email documents have different formats in the same way other documents have different format. For example, a Word document (.doc) looks and behaves differently than a text document (.txt) which looks and behaves differently than a rich text document (.rtf).
Email tends to be in one of three formats: html (this is the normal default, and the format usually used when the email contains a lot of pictures), rich text (more bare bones, but supports fancier formatting), and text, which lacks all bells and whistles.
The reason we request text is that email clients are often inconsistent about the way they display the other formats, meaning that a message that's perfectly readable to the sender becomes a mess on the receiving end. That, and because misuse of some formatting elements such as bold, italics, and colored text can make an email unreadable, so it's easier just to not deal with them.
So now the question is how you get your email client to actually send something in 'text' format. Well, the problem is that varies from client to client. Each email client or web based program is going to handle it differently, but it's usually an option of some sort. We're not going to go through here and list all the possibilities, and just recommend that you check your client's help files or google it.
Email tends to be in one of three formats: html (this is the normal default, and the format usually used when the email contains a lot of pictures), rich text (more bare bones, but supports fancier formatting), and text, which lacks all bells and whistles.
The reason we request text is that email clients are often inconsistent about the way they display the other formats, meaning that a message that's perfectly readable to the sender becomes a mess on the receiving end. That, and because misuse of some formatting elements such as bold, italics, and colored text can make an email unreadable, so it's easier just to not deal with them.
So now the question is how you get your email client to actually send something in 'text' format. Well, the problem is that varies from client to client. Each email client or web based program is going to handle it differently, but it's usually an option of some sort. We're not going to go through here and list all the possibilities, and just recommend that you check your client's help files or google it.