How to change auto setting in MS Outlook

Question

I have a long standing problem with MS Outlook (previously Outlook 2016 and now Outlook 365). When I compose an email, the vertical spacing between paragraphs looks fine. But when someone replies to my email, the vertical spacing in my original message has become huge. Yet, in my Sent folder, the original email still looks fine.

I know the cause but not how to solve it. In the "Paragraph" box, I have the spacing for both "Before" and "After" set to 0pt. But, looking at a reply, I find that both "Before" and "After" have mysteriously been changed to "Auto".

Can anyone tell me why Outlook is changing my "Before" and "After" settings to "Auto"? More importantly, where is "Auto" defined and how can I change it?

I tried creating a new Outlook profile but the problem persists.

Answer 1

Hi @bertram12 ,

But when someone replies to my email, the vertical spacing in my original message has become huge.

Do all the reply messages that you received display the abnormal format? If the issue only happened to some specific messages, are there any similarities of them (same recipient or other similarities)?

Also, if you send a message to yourself and reply it, could the format of this message display normally?

I have tried to test in my Outlook 365 and Outlook 2016, according to my tests, the vertical spacing wouldn't be changed if I sent a message to other users in my organization and they replied to me in Outlook. However, if I send to the Gmail users and they replied to me through the web mail, the spacing of the new message turned to "auto", which is same with your issue.

Can anyone tell me why Outlook is changing my "Before" and "After" settings to "Auto"?

I also have researched a lot about it, and found it may be caused by the HTML coding and depend on the way Outlook creates line breaks in HTML and how browsers or other clients interpret them, for more information, you can refer to this article:Messages are Double Spaced for the Recipient. (Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.)

how can I change it?

Actually, the format of these replied messages that your received from others wouldn't be affected by your setting, it's more related to the recipient, so it's suggested to contact the recipient to change the format of message or other operations as the article mentioned above and reply it to test.

Hope this could be helpful to you.

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Answer 2

An interesting and helpful reply.

On reading it, I have just run some tests. I created a second email account in Outlook 365 and also dusted off my rarely used Gmail account. I then sent a test email to both containing a mixture of breaks – i.e. Shift+Enter, Enter and Enter+Enter. The email displayed properly in my Sent folder and also in the above two Inboxes.

I then replied from both Inboxes. The reply from my second Outlook 365 account arrived into my main Inbox just fine. But the reply from Gmail showed the corruption. The Shift+Enter breaks were still OK, but all the Enter breaks were now taking up twice the amount of vertical space. “Enter” now looked the equivalent of “Enter+Enter”, and “Enter+Enter” looked like “Enter+Enter+Enter+Enter”. There weren’t really extra Enters, rather (as you say) an issue with “auto”.

So, if I understand this correctly, it looks like my original emails are going out OK and are also being received OK. But, if a recipient replies to me (using Gmail say) then the “auto” issue takes hold.

Many thanks for trouble. You’ve nailed down the issue. I’ll do a bit more reading to decide the best work-around.