For years now I've been reading and writing messages in Outlook using plain text email. I know it is old school and there is a lot of FUD surrounding it but I still think it is a best practice. At worst it is my personal preference. However, whenever I build out a new laptop I have to once again remember where those pesky settings are to force Outlook 2007 to use plain text. Hence, this post:

Reading email in plain text:
Select Tools > Trust Center from the Outlook 2007 menu and click on the E-mail Security node. In the Read as Plain Text section, select both checkboxes. Click the OK button to save the changes and exit the dialog.

Writing email in plain text:
Select Tools > Options from the Outlook 2007 menu and click on the Mail Format tab. In the Message Format section, choose Plain Text from the dropdown list. Consolas Regular 10.5 is the default font which is currently my favorite (except for single quotes and commas it is clearly cleaner looking than the old Courier New) but if you click on the Stationary and Fonts... button you can choose whatever font you prefer. Click the OK button twice to save the changes and exit the dialogs.

That's all there is to it. Why these two options are so far apart is beyond me.

The unconverted masses will continue to send you HTML email, so you will occasionally need to see non-text content. Outlook 2007 makes that easy, in the message you are reading as plain text, simply click on the orange bar near the top of the message and select Display as HTML from the context menu:

God forbid, you may even find that you need to send an HTML message. Outlook 2007 also makes that easy, in the message you are writing as plain text, choose Options > HTML from the Format Group:

<Todd />

PS: Why does Microsoft insist on including a dash in the word email?