How to stop Outlook from changing the justification of text from left aligned to fully justified.

Anonymous

Almost all email newsletters that come to Outlook are shown with fully justified text with words auto-hyphenated at line breaks when the email is NOT sent that way from the sender. I've seen this from at least three different external senders.

How do we stop Outlook from changing the line justification of incoming emails so they are shown as they are intended by the sender?

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Anonymous

Hi all,

The new Typography features are now available in production. The next step is that the feature is now being enabled by default starting with Current Channel Version 2403 (Build 17410.20000).

Since the initial release the team added controls to manage this feature in the client, Typography improvements in Word and Outlook for Windows (microsoft365.com).

Note:

Since this thread is old it may get locked again. If you need further help, please post a new thread.
There will be a new Typography article for Production shortly on https://support.microsoft.com/

In Outlook:

The new typography features are enabled in the Reading Pane. Default values are “on” for Beta Chanel and “on” for Production starting with Channel Version 2403 (Build 17410.20000).
To show the Reading Pane, click View > Reading Pane > Right or Bottom.
To turn off these features in Outlook Desktop, click File > Options > Mail > Editor Options > Advanced > Reading mode, and then clear the Advanced Typography in Reading Mode checkbox.
To turn off only Use Smart Justification or Use Hyphenationindividually, clear the corresponding check box.
The sender can disable the features for the emails they create, and those settings will not be overwritten by settings on recipient's computer.

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Anonymous

... Outlook now fully justifies and over-hyphenates for all email, including HTML email (sent from Mailchimp or other mass email services). The Outlook client does this at the recipient display level, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to turn it off. Those settings might work for Outlook to Outlook, in which case, there might be an email level override that somebody can work out.

Hmm ... I haven't seen that.

It might depend very much on one's computer environment and Outlook type and version.

I'm using the MS 365 desktop (not the 'New') Outlook on Windows 11, currently at Version 2408 (Build 17928.20156). What are you using?

My advanced typography settings in File > Options > Mail > Editor Options > Advanced are "Use Advanced Typography" is OFF, and "Disable Advanced Typography for outgoing mail" is also OFF.

None of my email correspondents sees any of my messages in Advanced Typography format, regardless of the email client either of us is using. Example client apps used by my correspondents include Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Outlook for Mac and Windows, various Android and iOS mail apps, and probably some webmail apps. Some have MS 365 (personal or business) mailboxes, and others use gmail or various other types of mail service.

When I send messages from my MS 365 outlook.com account via an Android app (Aqua Mail), those messages aren't being reformatted, either.

I don't see any received messages in Advanced Typography format, either in Outlook or in other clients such as that Android client app.

So ... with "Use Advanced Typography" turned off in desktop Outlook, my messages aren't being reformatted on sending, whether or not I also turn on "Disable Advanced Typography for outgoing mail".

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122 additional answers

Anonymous

2023-07-26T17:33:40+00:00

I'm pleased the automatic justification has been remedied at the moment, but we are still seeing issues with the table alignment being ignored. Is this something being looked at as well? It's causing big issues with our layouts...

Basically, the table is still causing a break in the sentence, even with align="left" or align="right" applied:
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Anonymous

2023-07-25T23:25:38+00:00

Just re-iterating what others have said, it's horribly over-reaching for Microsoft to force this on users, especially in the context of designed emails where a real human person has specifically chosen the text-alignment. There's specifically a CSS attribute that lets designers choose a text-alignment, and my initial testing showed that this feature ignored that instruction. It's bizarre that the team behind Outlook keep making it behave counter to the rest of the web and other browser-based email clients. It seems like a weird group-think decision - full justification is counter to accepted aesthetics and guidance - but I don't understand why they couldn't implement it more softly, by making it a default, instead of completing disregarding the established attribute, or just improving the algorithm when users choose to use full justification.

Gabriel, what does 'research for the project' mean? Is it peer-reviewed, has it included a variety of users, and how does it integrate the existing understanding that justified text can be harder to read? Full justification goes against WCAG Guidance: https://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/low-vision-a11y-tf/wiki/Supplemental_Guidance:_Text_Justification. What sort of testing have you done with users with low-vision, dyslexia or cognitive disabilities?

Gabriel, I really suggest feeding this back strongly to the team. If this rolls out broadly and it's forced on users, you're going to have a lot of unhappy users with loud opinions about both the product and the team who implemented it.
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Anonymous

2023-07-25T22:34:48+00:00

Thank you for the detailed explanation, Gabriel.

My feedback: this feature might well be useful at times, but - please, Microsoft! - it must be optional.

That would be consistent with the approach taken so far with other 'helpful' features in Microsoft Office - how and when they're applied is configurable. For example, the grammar assistance and spell-checking functions can be useful, but I for one do not want them forced upon me. I would never want the grammar-checker automatically reconstructing my sentences for me, nor would I allow the spell-checker to 'fix' my spelling automatically.

So, in my opinion, Microsoft shouldn't change that approach and force a reading-mode layout change on its users "because it's better" than whatever the user would choose if given the option.

As others who've replied have also pointed out, the belief that full justification is more readable and better-looking is misguided. More readable and better-looking to whom? Tastes and abilities differ. Different people have different vision, different ways of reading, different tastes about what 'looks' good, etc.

Other respondents have provided examples of real-life cases where forced justification clearly does not improve legibility, and can seriously interfere with a carefully-constructed layout, thus its readability and/or impact, as in the table-positioning example.

Having carefully laid out an important document or newsletter in a particular way, the author wants it to appear that way to their readers. Of course, some readers might prefer the fully-justified version - but please let them choose.

Regards,

LMA99.
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