<DIV><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=2> <P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 10px"><FONT size=2>The key word in your question is "sporadic". This is what we'd expect for the default settings for HTML mail in Outlook Express/Windows Mail. Why? Because the default setting (depending on which version of O.E. you have) is to reply in the same format as the email to which you're replying. </FONT> <P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 10px"><FONT size=2>What this means is that if you leave your mail program set that way, if someone sends you a plain text email, you're going to reply to that email in plain text even if your mail program is set to compose in HTML formatted email. The reasoning behind this is fairly simple to understand. We will try to explain it simply.</FONT> <P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 10px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 10px"><FONT size=2>If someone is using a pure plain text email program and you reply in HTML formatted email, they will see your response like this:</FONT>

That's right - if you reply to plain text email sent by a pure plain text email program, the recipient will see a bunch of symbols and HTML coding - hence it will be difficult to read.

Fortunately, there are not many pure plain text email programs left these days. Even programs like Mozilla Thunderbird, The Bat, Pegasus, Eudora, etc. which are basically considered excellent plain text email clients can read formatted HTML email and render it properly. This is because they all have support for HTML email (both read and compose).

Rarely will you send email to anyone these days using a pure plain text email client. Most of the time, if you receive an email in plain text it comes from someone using Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail who have left these Web applications set to their default settings - which is always plain text. However Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Gmail and most other popular Web-mail applications let you easily switch to HTML email and all can render HTML properly. So your mail will be readable even if you reply in HTML.

Since Outlook Express and Windows Mail are notoriously sloppy plain text email clients (both tend to write plain text emails that are not properly formatted) it might be a good idea to configure Outlook Express or Windows Mail to always reply in HTML format, regardless of the format in which the mail was sent

1. Open Outlook Express (or Windows Mail) - click "Tools" "Options"

2. Click the "Send" tab

3. Uncheck the box that says "Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent" (See image below):

Note in the  Mail Sending Format area, HTML is selected. If this is selected and you uncheck "Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent" then every email will be sent to the recipient in HTML format.

All this being said, if you have your email program set as shown in this article, and you still want to send a plain text email, you can do so simply by composing your email, click "Format" (on the toolbar) and selecting "Plain Text".