Mozilla mail question

[Jason Joines]

Susan Macchia wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>Before I state my problem, I want to apologize for this not being a linux only
>question.  But I thought that some of you might have experienced this problem. 
>Ok, here goes:
>
>At my job most folks use MS Outlook for email and generally format their email
>in HTML.
>
>I use Mozilla connecting to the exchange server which is POP.  I like mozilla
>much better, with its color coding of the inbox, etc.  When I receive outlook
>html formatted email, it looks like plain text in mozilla.  This is a real
>problem because in lengthy conversations, it becomes much more difficult to
>follow since color coding and font changes may be used.  I have tried saving an
>Outlook mail that I've sent as html and then reading it with mozilla, and it
>looks fine.  This leads me to believe that the html produced by outlook is
>readable by mozilla.  When I read email that I've sent (formatted as html), it
>looks fine in both outlook and mozilla.
>
>I've searched the mozilla preferces over and over to see if there is some kind
>of setting, but don't see anything.  Does anyone have any idea what mozilla
>could be doing?
>
>BTW, I tried Kmail and it has the same problem!  So it could be something in
>outlook?  Ideas of where I could start to look would be welcome.
>
>TIA
>
>
>=====
>_____________________________
>Susan Macchia
>mailto:susan at smacchia.net
>_____________________________
>
>- Running Linux - because life is too short for reboots...
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>  
>

    There is an article in the February issue of Linux Journal about 
replacing Microshaft Exchange (there is a commercial product at 
http://www.bynari.net/insightserver.html). 

    From what I can tell Outlook users who connect to the Exchange 
server exchange messages in a proprietary format with proprietary 
headers (Corporate WorkGroup Mode).  When you connect with Mozilla as a 
POP client, it can't decode this format.  If your send mail with 
Mozilla, it never converts the mail to a non standard format, so you can 
read it just fine.  If the Outlook users were to be connected to a 
standard POP/IMAP server they would be in Internet Mail Only Mode and 
would stick closer to the standard so you could probably read their 
stuff.  If your mail were on a different non-Exchange system, mail from 
your Outlook/Exchange users would have to go through an MTA which would 
recode the message and headers to standard before sending it on to the 
remote system.  You should be able to read that fine too.  The problem 
is indeed the use of a non-standards based mail system.

    We have a similar situation here.  The primary campus mail system is 
Lotus Blotes.  It uses a proprietary format for messages between Blotes 
Client/Server users.  If a message is sent to a non Blotes mail system, 
the MTA converts it to standard (usually very poorly, I'm sure the same 
is true of Exchange).  If a user connects to the Blotes server with a 
standard client, such as Mozilla, via POP/IMAP they cannot view the 
formatting of the message properly because it is still in a Blotes 
proprietary format.

     Only thing I know that might work is to have your mail forwarded to 
another non-Exchange server and see if the MTA converts it to standards 
well enough for your client to interpret it.

Jason Joines
Open Source = Open Mind
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