Candace B. Questions Our Advice About Disabling The Outlook Express Preview Pane
I just read your article about not having OE open the preview pane, and not block images because of html tags spammers use to see if yours is a legitimate e-mail address.  We do just the opposite.  We block html in e-mails while showing the preview pane.  OE blocks images, but all you have to do to view them (from a trusted source of course) is to click on the bar at the top, and it lets you then view images.  We used to use msgtag so we could see when someone opened our mail, but if the person didn't click on the bar to view images, we never knew our mail was ever opened.  Wouldn't this be the best of both worlds?  Please let me know, because I don't want to be laboring under a false assumption.  Candace B

Our Answer
You can do it however you see fit, but newsletters can be pretty ugly without graphics. You'll see red "x's" and big gaps where the images were supposed to appear. Sometimes images are necessary, especially in a newsletter like this one where we are attempting to show readers how to do certain things, or warn them of possible dangers.

And some folks sending stationery (hopefully ours). Using your method renders most of Outlook Express and Windows Mail's exceptional multi-media capabilities useless. Including the ability to send emails with stationery. I've found it much easier to disable the preview pane and click on emails that I want to read and delete email that I know is sp/am or unwanted email. That way when I read my mail I see the pictures and graphics (and stationery, videos, multi-media, etc) without having to click that very annoying "Outlook Express has blocked .... Content" bar across the top.

If I ever run into a situation where I am not sure if an email is sp/am or not (RARELY) I can simply right click on an email, choose "Properties", "Details" and read the text without ever opening the mail. In the "Properties" dialog I can read the entire text version of the mail, no images, colors, graphics, etc.. If I discover the email is legitimate, I can close the Properties dialog, go back to my email program and double-click it to read that email. If I discover it is sp/am, I can close the Properties dialog, go back to my email program, highlight the sp/am and hit the delete key. Rarely though, will you ever have to use the Properties dialog to determine if an email is legitimate or sp/am.

It seems to me clicking that "blocked content" bar is a lot more trouble than its worth, especially since most of us can tell by looking at the sender and subject line if the email is legitimate. If it's not all I have to do is select it with a single click and hit the delete key and it's gone. I don't have to open the email like you describe to find out it's spam. You're opening every email that comes your way. The danger with that is that blocking images and other HTML content does not disable phishing links or other links to malicious web sites- which are usually far more dangerous than letting a spammer know you opened his/her email. With the preview pane disabled any mail I suspect is sp/am is deleted by me without be exposed to any links at all - so even on my worst day, in my worst state of carelessness, and when my common sense is blurred by the need for sleep, there are no links for me to click - even by mistake.

I hope this clarifies why there are more reasons than one to turn off the preview pane in Outlook Express and Windows Mail. :-)

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