Help! Messages I send are double spaced for the recipient
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A frequent question in Outlook forums asks how to fix Outlook so
that messages aren't double spaced for the recipient. This effect is
caused by the HTML coding and is most frequent for recipients using
a web-based email client, such as GMail. This is because of the way Outlook creates line breaks in
HTML and how browsers or other clients interpret them. In some cases, the
message is correctly spaced when received and only double spaced when
replied to.
Note: This is not a problem new to Outlook 2007, it was
also a problem with older versions when using Word as the editor.
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:
Use plain text for messages. Plain text will look ok in any
and every email client available.
Press Enter once, not twice, when composing HTML formatted email.
Press Shift+Enter twice at the end of a paragraph, rather than pressing
Enter twice.
Just ignore it as an inconstancy in the way
various applications handle HTML.
Edit the email template to add '12 points after' in the
Normal style.
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.
Press Ctrl+H to open the search and replace dialog
Type ^p in the Find field
Type ^l in the Replace field (that's lower case L)
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.
Right click on NormalEmail.dotm and choose Open. This will
open the template in Word as a template.
Right click on the Normal style button in the ribbon and chose
Modify.
Click Format in the lower left and choose Paragraph.
In the Spacing section, change the After value to 12 points.
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.
Updated Tuesday May 25 2010
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