AOL HTML Mail - the workaround

Hi Folks:

Pure coincidence - while checking on a Javascript issue on internetnews.com, 
I came across an article about the infamous HTML-only email in AOL 6.0

A workaround which is similar to what Kelly offered was written up with a 
little more info.

>From the article:

How do I stop AOL 6 from sending HTML to the Internet?

With the release of version 6.0 of its client software, AOL began to embrace 
the use of full HTML in email (see FAQ item 8). This included a controversial 
feature in the sending of email to the Internet, in which messages were sent 
in a format known as multipart/alternative, which uses MIME enclosures to 
include two copies of every message: one in plain text, and one in HTML. 
Ideally, Internet email programs should be designed to display the version 
that they understand. HTML-compliant programs can display the HTML section, 
showing the formatting that the original sender included with the message; 
while text-only programs would only show the text section. Even HTML-enabled 
programs could be made to allow their users to choose (or switch to) the text 
portion if they prefer simplicity. However, some Internet email programs were 
never designed to recognize these MIME sections, resulting in the recipient 
of such a message seeing both the plain text and HTML versions of the email.

Solution

When communicating with Internet recipients who are not using an email 
program capable of selecting which MIME section to view, an AOL 6.0 user can 
turn off the HTML using the following steps:

Change your global email preferences (only needs to be done once): 
Go to Keyword: Preferences (or choose Preferences from the Settings menu on 
the AOL 6.0 toolbar). 
Click on Font, Text, & Graphics Preferences. 
Click on the Reset button at the bottom of the resulting window. Do not make 
any changes in the Font Preferences area of the window. 
Click on the Save button.
 
Change a specific email to plain text (must be done for every email): 
Compose and address the email as desired. 
Choose Select All from the Edit menu to highlight the entire message. 
With the mouse arrow somewhere over the highlighted text, click the Right 
mouse button, revealing a contextual menu (AKA Right-Click). 
Choose Normal from the Text menu. 
Taking care not to make any further changes to the message, send it. 

Note that changing the text to normal will eliminate the "blue bar" quoted 
text indicator, but will not remove some HTML elements of the quoted text. 
The entire quoted section must be deleted (or simply not quoted in the first 
place), followed by the re-entry of the text quoted manually, prior to 
changing the text to normal. Changing the text to normal will also eliminate 
any styled text that would have been seen by AOL recipients of the message, 
which cannot be re-added. Testing also suggests that messages with hyperlinks 
cannot be converted to normal text, requiring the prior removal of the link.

If you are interested in the article:
http://www.internetnews.com/prod-news/article/0,,9_504491,00.html

FAQs about AOL email can be found at:
http://members.aol.com/adamkb/aol/mailfaq/

Hope this helps the encumbered out there....

- Jeff K.

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