Help! Messages I send are double spaced for the recipient

Cause | Solutions | Edit the Template

Cause

When you press Enter while creating HTML email, Outlook inserts a paragraph tag (<p>), so two Enters (for white space between the paragraphs) inserts two <p> tags, which is double spaced when rendered in a browser. If you use Shift+Enter twice, which creates the line break tag (<br>), the message will not look double spaced in a browser. This will look ok in all mail clients.

To see if you are using the <p> or <br> tag when composing messages, press Ctrl+Shift+8 to toggle marks off and on.

Solutions

You have 6 options:

1. Use plain text for messages. Plain text will look ok in any and every email client available.
2. Press Enter once, not twice, when composing HTML formatted email.
3. Press Shift+Enter twice at the end of a paragraph, rather than pressing Enter twice.
4. Just ignore it as an inconstancy in the way various applications handle HTML.
5. Edit the email template to add '12 points after' in the Normal style.
6. Use Search and Replace to replace paragraph symbols (^p) with a manual line break(^l)

My preference is to ignore it in messages - email is an imperfect medium and most people are used to inconstancies such as this. I'm more concerned that I can read messages I recieve, not with how they look. 

I often use Shift+Enter when I compose messages for my newsletters or edit the p style in my CSS to add 12 points bottom margin (margin-bottom:12.0pt;).

Use Search & Replace

This suggestion comes from Jim: Do a "replace all" on "caret p" with "caret l".

This works best when the message contains only plain paragraphs - bulleted or numbered lists and other formatting require paragraphs, not line breaks. 

Use Search and Replace to replace the paragraph with a manual line break.

1. Press Ctrl+H to open the search and replace dialog
2. Type ^p in the Find field
3. Type ^l in the Replace field (that's lower case L)
4. Replace all (Use Replace and Find Next if using formatting that requires paragraphs)

If you press Ctrl+Shift+8 to show formatting marks, you'll see the paragraph marks ( ¶ ) are replaced with manual line breaks ( 8  ).  Press Ctrl+Shift+8 to toggle the marks off.

Edit the Template

In Outlook 2007:

Close Outlook. (If you get a message that the template is read only, Outlook is not closed.) Locate NormalEmail.dotm  and open it for editing. You'll find it in the templates folder at C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates (Vista), To easily access this folder in Windows XP or Vista, paste

%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates\

in the Start search dialog (Vista) or the address bar of Windows Explorer.

1. Right click on NormalEmail.dotm and choose Open. This will open the template in Word as a template.
2. Right click on the Normal style button in the ribbon and chose Modify.
3.  Click Format in the lower left and choose Paragraph.
4. In the Spacing section, change the After value to 12 points.
5. Save and close the template.

Now when you write a new message you'll press enter once and have white space when recipients read the message in any client or web browser. Replies will use the style sheet of the original message.