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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Anonymous

2024-09-23T06:15:51+00:00
Yes, that's what I'm seeing. I believe it's behaving as intended by Microsoft: the recipient settings always take precedence.

But, the problem remains:
- The default setting badly justifies text and over-hyphenates, especially with small columns
- It's difficult for the sender to override these settings so the email appears as designed
- This goes against the standard practice of email clients. The email client can have preferences but the sender should be able to override those preferences and have control over how the delivered email looks, especially in HTML email. There's specific directions we can give in html to left align or justify text, but they are being ignored only by this Outlook build and by no other email client or web browser.
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Anonymous

2024-09-23T06:27:50+00:00

For anyone looking for the registry settings to disable the 'feature', I found that this does the trick when added via group policy:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word\Options\WordMail]
"AdvancedTypographyReading"=dword:00000000
"AdvancedTypographyReadingSmartJustification"=dword:00000000
"AdvancedTypographyReadingHyphenation"=dword:00000000

Oddly, I couldn't see those in regedit but found them when exporting the key to a file.
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Anonymous

2024-10-04T14:19:05+00:00

We recently noticed this issue and it's really frustrating that we can't control the layout (justification and hyphenation) of emails that we send through Outlook. And it's a big imposition to ask all Outlook email recipients to change their email settings (following several steps to find).

This article points out some email template tweaks, but that didn't solve the problem for us:

https://knak.com/blog/microsoft-introduces-advanced-typography/

More concerning though, is that the Advanced Typography features cause accessibly issues and fails WCAG. According to that article:

The biggest issue is the fact that fully justified text is an accessibility failure, specifically failure F88 of Visual Presentation SC 1.4.8:

Failure of Success Criterion 1.4.8 due to using text that is justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins)

The Success Criterion of 1.4.8 is: “Text is not justified(aligned to both the left and the right margins).” Clearly, this is an instant failure for every paragraph of text that Outlook’s new Advanced Typography Features has decided to adjust.

This failure has huge implications for organizations sending emails that are required to comply with accessibility standards in every email.

If this is the case, Microsoft is asking for lawsuits. Please fix this issue before the lawyers get involved.

Thank you!
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