Why all these dots instead of the spaces that were there & ¶ marks when I Reply to or Forward an email in my new Outlook in Office 2019 Pro+?

Anonymous
2025-05-09T01:51:07+00:00

This is crazy and surely there's an easy Settings fix. I've been using Outlook on my Windows PC since the early '90s. Just finally upgraded to Outlook in Office 2019 Pro+ from Outlook 2016. What the heck is Outlook doing by putting dots instead of all the spaces on emails as I'm Replying to them? More importantly, how do I stop it from this madness?

Here's an example:

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-05-10T17:11:24+00:00

    Yeah, new technology quirks can be hard for some of us old-timers to get used to using or even remember. Windows 11 is doing that to me on a few things, the worst being reopening things that I've opened by clicking any of its several popups in the Taskbar if there's more than one. For some reason, sometimes it doesn't go to the one I clicked on but instead goes to another program that's open. Sometimes I need to click the icon in the Taskbar even though there's several popup choices.

    GRRRRR

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-05-11T02:41:17+00:00

    I have not seen that happen yet, at least not that I can recall. But yeah, new techonlogy always have a few quirks.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-05-11T15:14:36+00:00

    Since you said that it's not happened to you, it got me thinking. I'm pretty sure this has only happened to me when I'm trying to reopen 1 of several open tabs on only my old Jasc Paint Shop Pro v6. Paint Shop Pro was sold to Corel years ago. I have both but I really like the simplicity of that old Jasc version. I know how to do everything I want on it and since I'm a Facebookaholic, I use it a lot.

    That old Jasc Paint Shop Pro v6 is one that at some point in the past with a new Windows (maybe 7 or 8?), I had to use something that Microsoft put out to run older programs.

    Since Jasc doesn't develop the Paint Shop Pro program anymore, this is probably a glitch that could have easily been fixed but never will be.

    Oh well. I’ve made notes of how to do all my stuff on the newer Corel Paint Shop Pro, but I hate it so much that I've never convinced myself to learn it if my old Jasc version still works. 😉👍

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-05-15T06:33:55+00:00

    Diane, this change isn't staying in place for new emails. I've done it both ways and it just comes back for the next email. If I Reply or Forward an email that was created after turning off those things, it too doesn't have them. Could this be because I use Outlook (Classic) instead of whatever the newer built-in version of it is that it used to pester me about trying?

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-05-15T06:37:37+00:00

    Diane, I need to correct that last thing I said. It does stay sometimes, but not always. Maybe I need to shut down Outlook and see if that's what makes it stop hiding the paragraph symbols and other junk?

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