By default, when you read e-mail in Outlook Express in Windows XP, messages containing HTML code are displayed with this rich formatting. Thus, e-mail may contain colors, different fonts and formatting (such as bold and italics), images, and more.

Unfortunately, some unscrupulous e-mail senders may send e-mail containing malicious code, especially if an exploit exists in Outlook Express that has not yet been patched. Therefore, for security and privacy reasons, you may wish to disable this feature and read all messages as plain text.

1. Click the "Tools" menu, selecting "Options".

2. The "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears. Click the "Read" tab.

3. Underneath "Reading Messages", check "Read all messages in plain text".

4. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

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