Create a plain text version

There are a number of reasons why some people prefer to receive only plain text email: They could be connected using a slow modem, their email client doesn't handle HTML, or for accessibility ( Assistive technologies like screen readers).  The best way to handle these subscribers is to keep separate lists of your subscribers and just send the version they prefer. Of course that is not a perfect solution either because they will make mistakes when they tell you their preferences and their preferences will change over time.

Here is the best practical solution I know of. Send both versions to everyone!

No, I do not mean send them two separate messages. HTML lets you hide content using a set of tags that look like this: <!-- content to be hidden -->

This lets you solve your problem of HTML vs plain text email by hiding the plain text version so that email clients that understand the HTML tags in your message will not display this version, but they will display the HTML version. Plain text email clients will not understand the meaning of the tags so they will display the tags and all. By placing the plain text version of your newsletter first, set off by the "comment" tags, "<!--" and "-->", your readers will see just the first tag, "<!--" followed by the entire plain text newsletter, and then by the HTML version, showing tags and all. This is not the prettiest thing they will ever see, but they will have the whole plain text newsletter, presented intact, before they get to the "junk".

Of course, before we can send out a plain text newsletter, we must create one. Since we already have the completed HTML version, I suggest that you open the newsletter in FrontPage Preview Pane, then select everything: press "Control-A" to select all. Press "Control-C" to copy the contents selected onto the Windows clipboard.

Next, switch to a new page in Microsoft® Word®, click in the document and from the menu bar choose Edit:Paste Special:Unformatted Text. The result will be just the contents of the newsletter, with all the HTML tags, horizontal lines and graphic images removed. From here, make the editing changes you wish to format the plain text version. I suggest that you select all of the text and change the font to Courier or another mono-spaced font so that you can better see the effects of your formatting changes. A plain text version in Microsoft Word is shown below.

Once I pasted my HTML newsletter into Microsoft Word, using the paste special option, I changed the font to "Courier New" which makes all the letters take up the same space, then I changed the font size to 10 point, added dashes and stars to make my breaks obvious, then put in hard breaks at the end of every line to force the text to wrap where I wanted it to. Just make sure that you break every line at 60 characters or fewer. Otherwise your subscribers' email programs will probably force the lines to wrap where you do not want them to, making for a really ugly presentation.

After you finish your formatting, save the file as plain text. Close the file and re-open it to see what it now looks like. This exercise will help you catch formatting problems you overlooked on your first pass.

Now that I have my plain text version, I will insert the whole plain text version as a comment, into my beautiful HTML version, so now I re-open the finished HTML newsletter in FrontPage.

Next I switch to Microsoft Word and open the plain text version, then select all and copy to the clipboard. Remember? Press "Control-A" to select all of the document, then "Control-C" to copy it to the Windows clipboard. Now I switch back to FrontPage where I can once again see the HTML version of the newsletter.

I click at the top of the newsletter to select the point of insertion for the plain text version. From the menu bar I choose Insert:Comment and click into the box that opens to place the insertion point there, and press "Control-V" to paste the contents of the clipboard into my HTML file. Yikes! Now I see the text version--in purple text! Don't panic! It will not show up in the HTML version. It is a comment--remember? To prove it, just click the "Preview" tab. See? It is not ruined. Okay. Settle down. Breathe...

I save my work.

Now when I email this newsletter file email programs that are HTML-enabled will see all my pretty colors and graphics. Those that are not, will see the plain text version. Pretty cool, huh?