2007 New PC vs Old PC - Micro Font on Inbound Emails :(

[Steven]

Posting this is the General Forum, realizing this might become a programming issue!

So, I got a new laptop, still have the old ones as well. Using the same installation of Office 2007 on all my machines.

Every machine receives new emails in very readable 11.5 font size except for this new laptop .. it re formats every darn inbound message to a totally unreadable 4 point font !!

It's literally driving me nuts.. and I have severe Tinnitus 24/7 so I really know about 'driving me nuts'.

Of course I've tried every formatting tool there is in 'Options' .. all my PC are setup identically therein.

The only thing I can think is maybe the MS techs are reading my native screen resolution and changing the fonts to something they feel would be suitable.. I've made a few Excel forms that way to 'fit' on screens of different resolution sizes.. which is why I think such silly things might be going on here.

My new laptop native resolution is 3840 x 2160 on a 17" screen.

Yes I know.. anyone can CNTRL+Scroll to zoom in and out.. and yes that works fine to zoom into every incoming email to view them.. but I'm getting tired of that..

So I started looking into maybe writing a script or (on demand) macro to .GROW the contents of every message that comes in.. OH BOY.. VBA for Outlook is nothing like VBA for Excel

To all you Outlook pros in here.. please leave some commentary for me to try.. or maybe advise if I should make a similar post in the programming areas here..

Thanks very much!
Steven

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Every machine receives new emails in very readable 11.5 font size except for this new laptop .. it re formats every darn inbound message to a totally unreadable 4 point font !!

Is it actually 4 pt or small print, like it is zoomed out?

My new laptop native resolution is 3840 x 2160 on a 17" screen.

Ok... it's due in part to this. If other programs also have issues, you can raise the zoom level for the display - i think the Hi-res screens are already at 150% though - any anything higher could cause issues with dialog boxes and other things.

So I started looking into maybe writing a script or (on demand) macro to .GROW the contents of every message that comes in.. OH BOY.. VBA for Outlook is nothing like VBA for Excel

I have a zoom macro - Adjusting Outlook's Zoom Setting in Email - it should work in 2007 (but not older).

 

[Steven]

Hello Diane,

Thank you for taking interest in my situation and your kind reply.

Yes, it's actually creating 3.5 and 4 point fonts. And yes zooming can make the portions in those tiny fonts readable but this is getting ridiculous.. every email, zoom zoom zoom.. something under the hood is not right. Also, zoom magnifies header stuff (From: To: Subject: ) to obnoxious size .. it's like kindergarten or the old folks home.

Have a look at the attached, this is from ebay showing me the prices of newly posted items.. I cant even see the price on this PC..

I love your extensive writing on all the facets of zoom.. very nice indeed.

What I found that works to my liking is, put a newly received email in edit mode, Cntrl-A (select all) then use the font grow function 7 or 8 times.. save the email.. and now it looks somewhat normal. Of course this effects only the email body, so the other things that magnify horribly under a zoom are not a problem.

Until I find out whats causing the issue, I would like to either make a macro that can be used on the fly, or a inbox rule that calls a routine containing the required code.

The code that interests me is the same thing I manually do with Edit, Cntrl+A, Font Grow.. I see the code would include the argument Selection.Font.Grow and I would run that 8 times consecutively .. what I don't know (yet) is how to put that together..

I'm also going to run some experiments with native resolution to see if that has any effect on the size of the fonts as the new emails process into my inbox. Currently stumped and frustrated.

Thank you very much !!

 

[Diane Poremsky]

Outlook *should not* actually change the font. Are new messages changed if you run outlook in Safe mode? (currently affected ones probably won't be changed) What antivirus scanner do you use? Some of the AV and spam addins have been known to change the fonts - their MO was generally to delete dots, resulting in huge fonts though.

Go to Tools, Options, mail format tab, stationery and fonts and check your font settings - are you overriding fonts? What font size is set there? (If almost everything uses Helv. then you probably are overriding what you can, just got to find the right setting.)

There is also a setting in Word that can effect email - options is called Web options. It's in word's options, Advanced, near the bottom. Use CSS and Font settings would be the ones to check.

 

[Steven]

Well.. my suspicion was (is) 100% correct.. changing the recommended 3840 x 2160 to 1280 x 800 native resolution does restore the ridiculous 3.5 and 4. fonts to a normal 9 and 10 points without touching ANY other settings.

This means MS is using a font.shrink method based on my screen resolution. This also means if I want to keep my PC running as intended and also use MS OL (2007 ver) I will need a font.Grow solution.

PS.. I'm running WinX Home too..