Maintaining Chosen Font Style While Replying In-line

Frequently I need to respond to emails with bunch of inline comments.

Say the email came written in TimesNewRoman-11, and my default font for composing emails is the same. If I use my default font, the inline comments don't stand-out for the person reading my response. So I need to mark all my response lines with a different style, one contiguous segment at a time.

The question is, how can I have Outlook maintain my chosen font style when I click around to type my in-line comments within the (already styled) quote block in the reply?

I don't want to change my default font for that. Is it even possible?

Vikhram

Posted 2016-01-08T14:04:59.437

Reputation: 111

Why not just change the font/colour, etc. in the Outlook ribbon while editing the email? The changes will stick while typing in that email, but won't become your "default" for all of Outlook. It'll change back to your default the next time you compose a new email. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2016-01-08T15:15:42.307

@Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 as soon as you move the cursor to another location in the email I am responding to the style changes back to default – Vikhram – 2016-01-08T15:21:01.110

Ahh, it's because you're putting your cursor into the quoted area, which has a predefined style.. Gotcha! Yeah, I don't think you're going to find a way to avoid that, but who knows. :) One of the tricks I use for this is to copy a single character, that already has the style applied, to the clip board. I then Paste it into where I want to in-line reply, start typing, and then go back and remove the first character (the one I pasted). Sometimes that's slightly faster than using Format Painter on all the lines after the fact. :) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2016-01-08T15:28:50.487

I reworded you post a bit to try and clarify what you're asking. If you're unsatisfied, feel free to roll it back and/or apply your own edits. :) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2016-01-08T15:34:55.203

Answers

In Outlook you can use the Format Painter to copy the format of selected text.

Type your comments, format a line of text the way you would like it. Double click the format painter button, then highlight all your other comments to apply the format. This will not change your default formatting, nor will it change anything else that you didn't highlight. When you're done "painting", click the button again to turn it off.

The Format Painter button should be on the Message ribbon in the Clipboard section.

B540Glenn

Posted 2016-01-08T14:04:59.437

Reputation: 1 045

This is what I am currently doing, but as I explained, I will have to repeat that say 20 times for 20 different inline comments. Also, it will be similarly difficult for me to read my own response (for highlighting purposes) causing me to miss highlighting some places that I need to – Vikhram – 2016-01-08T15:24:37.097

In Word, you can use Track Changes (Review ribbon). In the Advanced Options of Track Changes, you can set different colours for insertions, deletion and changed lines. If you use Word to edit the e-mail response, any comments you type into the original text will be in a different colour. – B540Glenn – 2016-01-08T16:33:57.813

I already know how to do it. I am trying to find a more effecient and less error prone way. Tracking changes just makes it still more ineffecient – Vikhram – 2016-01-08T18:43:44.007

How are you with VBA? Create a script that runs when you press Reply (or Reply All) that saves your default font and colour and changes to a new font and colour for editing the reply. When you press Send, a script can run to restore your font and colour. – B540Glenn – 2016-01-08T19:16:28.100

I wouldn't know what style the incoming email is. Also it takes away the option to use different styles while adding inline comments – Vikhram – 2016-01-08T20:06:49.290