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Editing received email messages

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› Outlook › Email › Editing received email messages

Last reviewed on January 15, 2019     7 Comments

August 1, 2011 by Diane Poremsky 7 Comments

It's simple to open a received message to edit it or change the format of messages.

You can use this method to add notes to a message or add attachments to a message. You don't need to go into edit mode to edit the subject field: simply type in the subject field of an open message to make changes.

To change the message format (HTML to plain text), look on the Options tab.

  1. Open the message.
  2. On the opened message's ribbon or menus: In Outlook 2010 and newer: Go to Actions, Edit Message (Actions is in the Move section of the ribbon)
    Editing Received Messages
    In Outlook 2007: Click on Other Actions, Edit message
  3. Edit the message and then click Save to save the changes. Close and cancel to discard the changes.

How to Convert a Message to Plain Text Format

More Information

Changes are not saved until you Save the message. You can reply or forward the edited message without saving it. (Change the format before hitting Reply to use quote prefix for that format.)

Editing received email messages was last modified: January 15th, 2019 by Diane Poremsky

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  • To Use Internet-Style Quoting
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  • Attachments are deleted from plain text messages after the January 9 2018 Update (Fixed)

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

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Ajay
Ajay

Can i also edit the To and CC field. If Yes, how?

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
July 6, 2017 7:02 am
Diane Poremsky
Diane Poremsky

No, those are read-only fields. Sorry.

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
July 6, 2017 4:59 pm
JF
JF

Thank you so much Diane! This was exactly the ID I was looking for; worked like a charm :)

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
December 31, 2014 10:50 am
JF
JF

Hi Diane, sorry I know this is an old post, but I'm looking at going into edit message mode and I can't find a way. I even tried finding a command bar option using the script in this page but couldn't find one for Edit Message: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/201095

This way I could've done something like:
myInspector.CommandBars.FindControl(,ID).Execute

Do you have any solution?

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
December 30, 2014 2:06 pm
Diane Poremsky

you can disable it using group policy - see https://www.slipstick.com/how-to-outlook/group-policy-disable-commands/ - edit message is 5604

Vote Up00Vote Down Reply
December 30, 2014 9:07 pm
Dennis Wilson
Dennis Wilson

Would you happen to have any VBA examples that show how to execute the "Edit Message" and how to change the text to html format?

Vote Up1-1Vote Down Reply
December 13, 2012 2:58 pm
Diane Poremsky

I should have some, somewhere. Text to HTML is item.htmlbody = item.body. Do you need to go into Edit message mode or just change things, like from plain to html?

Vote Up1-1Vote Down Reply
December 13, 2012 8:42 pm

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