Thread: Outlook is feeling blue

When I use Microsoft Outlook to reply to an email, my message sometimes appears in blue text, and sometimes in black. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop it doing this - do you know how I can fix it?

This is not a bug but a feature of Outlook Outlook is set by default to type your replies in blue text when you reply to any message The reason it only shows up on some messages is that there are, broadly speaking, two types of email, and it only works with one of them. When you're sent an email in HTML format it can include fonts, colours and pictures, and your replies will appear in blue. When the email is in text format it can't include any colours, so your reply will appear in black text.

To switch this off, open Outlook and click the Tools menu, then select Options. Click the Mail Format tab and click the Fonts button, which is roughly in the middle of the dialogue box. You'll see a new dialogue box with three kinds of text listed at the top, and the middle one will be blue. To change this, click the Choose Font button next to it, and select a new colour from the dropdown list at the bottom-left. Click OK to confirm the change. If you like, you can also change the font entirely, or its size.

It's usually worth selecting something plain though, to keep it readable - while a gothic or handwriting script font might look nice to you, it's probably quite hard for others to read. Click OK to close the Fonts dialogue box, then OK again.