How can I tell which message format an Outlook MSG file was composed with?

Question

I need to determine what message format (Plain-text, RTF, HTML, etc) an email message is in. I have the .MSG file from the sender's sent items folder. Is there a way I can check this in Outlook 2010?

Answer 1

You need to look at the email messages header. Depending on your email client this can be achieved a number of ways.

Steps in outlook to see the message header:

1. Open the message in a new window in Outlook.
2. Select View | Options... from the message's menu
3. All header lines appear under Internet Headers at the bottom of the dialog that comes up.

At the end of the header you'll see a line like this:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8

If the Content-Type is text/plain it's text only and if it's text/html then it's HTML.