Convert Outlook HTML messages to plain text

Product: SimplyFile for Microsoft Outlook

Nowadays, a large number of messages you receive are sent in HTML format. There are two potential problems with HTML messages:

  1. They could potentially compromise your privacy
  2. The take up an unnecessarily large amount of space

Privacy
Many HTML messages contain links to external websites. Some of those links can be used to spy on you. For example, if Outlook downloads an image from an external website when you open a message, the website owner will know that you opened the message. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.

In the past, we have seen viruses which can infect your computer when you simply view an image. This is another potential threat from HTML messages.

Mailbox space issues
Have you ever received a message with just a few lines of text and an image in the email signature? You probably have, and more than once. Messages like that can easily take up 50KB of space rather than 4-5KB which an equivalent plain text message would. That is a potential 10x space saving. Sometimes images and formatting are an essential part of the message, but more often than not, they are not. In that case, converting the message to plain text will save a lot of space.

How do you convert a message to plain text? Very simple - SimplyFile has a button that will do that with just one click. You can even select a number of messages and convert them all in one fell swoop.

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