Every now and then when someone replies to an email message I have sent, there will be no Reply to view. I open the reply and all I see is my original message. There is no attachment, no nothing. The reply text is literally nowhere to be found. And yes I am sure the person actually typed a Reply (duh...I check that first even if it means using the dreaded telephone!!) and because usually they'll resend the message promptly if I ask. It happens with different users on many different ISPs/servers so I think the problem must be me? This is so frustrating...can you help?

Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. Go to Outlook, tools, options and view your security settings. If "do not allow attachments" is checked, any attachment that is sent to you will be deleted. Uncheck that if you want to receive documents, pictures etc in email. Adjust the other settings according to your preferences. I never heard of Outlook actually "deleting" text from the email. If that is happening, maybe you need to repair or reinstall. You will probably want to back up your email if you decide to do that. There are programs out there that will do this (most are for a fee).

if you're using outlook you can save all your mails to a .pst file on your local machine.

I did some more research on my problem. As near as I can tell the problem is caused by Outlook's preference for HTML email. The scenario seems to be:

1. Person uses Outlook with standard config (use HTML)

2. User sends email from Outlook. This goes as both text and HTML. The email source shows the text first followed by the HTML version.

3. Recipient uses some other client that does not use HTML in email

4. Recipient replies and the reply is part of (above or below) the text portion.

5. Sender opens reply in Outlook, which displays only the HTML version - which is not where the reply was entered.

Outlook does not seem to have a way to recognize that the text version no longer matches the HTML and to display the additional information.