Remove reply indenting from HTML message (Outlook

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Hello, fellow obsessive-compulsive! I shall use this!

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 22-Apr-05 14:27. )

Indenting of replies really annoys me. This macro will remove indenting from HTML messages.

April 22, 2005 – A new version of the UnBlockQuote procedure, now entitled UnIndentHTML, is in the attachment. You will still need the WildReplace function from the body of this message in order to run it.

April 12, 2005 – Original limited version.
[/list]

Sub UnBlockQuote()
' Remove BLOCKQUOTE tags, which cause annoying indenting, from HTML message
' Not fault tolerant, do not run without HTML message open and active
If MsgBox("Remove the BLOCKQUOTE tags from this message?", _
        vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbNo Then Exit Sub
Dim msg As MailItem
Set msg = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, "", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "
", vbNullString)
Set msg = Nothing
End Sub
 
Private Function WildReplace(strExpression As String, strFind As String, _
    strReplace As String, Optional bolReplaceAll As Boolean = True, _
    Optional bolCaseSensitive As Boolean = False) As String
'reference to Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions NOT required... uses late binding
'requires VBScript 5 = IE 5.x
'perform minimal parameter checking
If (strExpression = vbNullString) Or (strFind = vbNullString) Then
    WildReplace = strExpression
    Exit Function
End If
'Dim objRegExp As RegExp
Dim objRegExp As Object
'instantiate RegExp object
'Set objRegExp = New RegExp
Set objRegExp = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
objRegExp.IgnoreCase = Not bolCaseSensitive
objRegExp.Global = bolReplaceAll
' Pattern syntax: Visual Basic Scripting Edition-Pattern Property
objRegExp.Pattern = strFind
WildReplace = objRegExp.Replace(strExpression, strReplace)
Set objRegExp = Nothing
End Function

What’s strange is that closing the message doesn’t seem to generate a “save/don’t save” dialog. So if you’re not sure you want to run it, don’t run it.

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Turns out that there is another way in which HTML is indented, if Word is involved as the mail editor: a LEFT-MARGIN property is set in a paragraph or other tag. This updated version addresses those as well. However, if the margin was there for some reason other than indenting a reply, it will be removed anyway, so that could be a problem for some types of stationery or heavily formatted newsletters.

Code:

Sub UnBlockQuote()
' Remove BLOCKQUOTE tags, which cause annoying indenting, from HTML message
' Not fault tolerant, do not run without HTML message open and active
If MsgBox("Remove the BLOCKQUOTE tags and MARGIN-LEFT settings from this message?", _
        vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbNo Then Exit Sub
Dim msg As MailItem
Set msg = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
' Remove end tag and then start tag
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, "", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "
", vbNullString)
' Remove MARGIN-LEFT property and then clean up empty style tags, if any
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "MARGIN-LEFT: [0-9.]+in", vbNullString)
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, " style=""""", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
Set msg = Nothing
End Sub
 
Private Function WildReplace(strExpression As String, strFind As String, _
    strReplace As String, Optional bolReplaceAll As Boolean = True, _
    Optional bolCaseSensitive As Boolean = False) As String
'reference to Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions NOT required... uses late binding
'requires VBScript 5 = IE 5.x
'perform minimal parameter checking
If (strExpression = vbNullString) Or (strFind = vbNullString) Then
    WildReplace = strExpression
    Exit Function
End If
'Dim objRegExp As RegExp
Dim objRegExp As Object
'instantiate RegExp object
'Set objRegExp = New RegExp
Set objRegExp = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
objRegExp.IgnoreCase = Not bolCaseSensitive
objRegExp.Global = bolReplaceAll
' Pattern syntax: [url]http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/script56/html/vspropattern.asp[/url]
objRegExp.Pattern = strFind
WildReplace = objRegExp.Replace(strExpression, strReplace)
Set objRegExp = Nothing
End Function

This is targeted to countries where margin indents are measured in inches. I’m sure there’s a way to internationalize that, but let’s see if there’s any market demand first.

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I detest stationery. While you’re at it, can you add code to remove stationery? It appears to be recognized as Type 1 Attachment, so I don’t know how to distinguish it; perhaps this is it in the HTML script?

Outlook Editor:

Word Editor:

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Unless I need HTML, I generally convert my reply or forward to plain text, which effectively removes the stationery. To create a macro to remove it, I suspect that you’d have to rip out all the style definitions and background graphics. Could there be anything else? And I suspect you’d need code for both “normal” and Word-generated HTML. It would be interesting to write a macro that runs HTMLBody through HTML Tidy for clean-up. I wonder what would come back?

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By Notepad editing saved HTML message files created with the Outlook Editor and with Word, it looks like I need to remove
” background=cid:”
and all following junk through to the
“>”

I hate to even get messages with stationery. But I don’t always change the format when I get HTML, because I get a lot of tables that get their format trashed by conversion to plain text.

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Adding something like this might cleanse the BODY tag back to its essential purity:

msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, “”, “”)

Want to test it out while I mosey on over to the Word forum for a while?

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It’s working on messages created by the built-in Outlook editor, but not on those created by Word.

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Hmmm, I found one of the little devils in my archives. There is a line break in the tag because it is so long, which causes the RegExp syntax not to work. Let me see… this is getting awfully repetitive, but it’s fast and worthwhile, so we can cover both cases: one line and two:

‘ Kill background image and everything else in the BODY tag (normal, Word)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, “”, “”)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, “”, “”)

Should it be an optional extra? Naaaah!

Added: This was the Word BODY tag I found; there is some kind of “ivy” or other plant growing down the left side of the background image, hence the big margin setting.

I wonder whether the embedded graphic image data will get discarded if I click Forward first and clean the new message (rather than changing the original)? Would be a nice bonus, but I wouldn’t count on it…

Hmmm… I notice that the style tags use single quotation marks instead of double. Yet another thing to fix in my code.

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Standing on the shoulders of giants, I have had a play with this and morphed it with VBA Macro to Remove Stationery from Email Message and to heavily strip the default html metadata content in emails when replying or forwarding. The particular problem I had was trying to standardise the fonts in an email when replying or forwarding. The default font where you type your message didn’t appear to be controllable in the options in Outlook 2007 – well they don’t respond to the obvious setting anyway.

Having never played with regexp before this was a big learning experience for me and it took a long time for me to work out why it couldn’t find anything when there were line breaks in the string. I would be interested in any suggestions to make the code more compact and work around the linebreaks problem in a more elegant way than my kludgy zxzx method.

Sub EmailCleaner()
  On Error GoTo EmailCleaner_Error
  Dim myMessage As Outlook.MailItem
  Dim str As String
  
  ' First, check to see if we are in preview-pane mode or message-view mode
  ' If neither, quit out
  Select Case TypeName(Outlook.Application.ActiveWindow)
    Case "Explorer"
       Set myMessage = ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
    Case "Inspector"
       Set myMessage = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    Case Else
       MsgBox ("No message selected.")
       Exit Sub
  End Select
  ' Sanity check to make sure selected message is actually a mail item
  If TypeName(myMessage)  "MailItem" Then
    MsgBox ("No message selected.")
    Exit Sub
  End If

  'Debug.Print myMessage.HTMLBody
  
  ' Remove attributes from  tag
  str = myMessage.HTMLBody
  str = WildReplace(str, "]*>", "" & vbCrLf & "

  ", True, False)   'simplify body
  str = WildReplace(str, "
", "

", True, False)       'simplify para tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "", "", True, False)       'simplify bold tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "
", "
", True, False)     'simplify br tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "]*>", "", True, False)     'remove img tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "]*>", "", True, False)     'remove font tags
  str = Replace(str, "", "", , , vbTextCompare)        'remove closing font tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "]*>", "", True, False)     'remove span tags
  str = Replace(str, "", "", , , vbTextCompare)        'remove closing span tags
  str = WildReplace(str, "
", "", True, False)         'remove div tags
  str = Replace(str, "
", "", , , vbTextCompare)         'remove closing div tags
  
  'replace the complete head tag area with a simplified formatting override
  str = WildReplace(str, "<head.+?", _
        "p {font-family:'Lucida Sans','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt}", _
True, False)     'simplify head
  
  str = Replace(str, "", "", , , vbTextCompare)
  str = Replace(str, "", "", , , vbTextCompare)
  str = Replace(str, vbCrLf & vbCrLf, vbCrLf, , , vbTextCompare)
  str = Replace(str, vbCrLf & vbCrLf, vbCrLf, , , vbTextCompare)
  str = Replace(str, "


", "

", , , vbTextCompare)
  str = Replace(str, "

 
", "", , , vbTextCompare)
 
  Debug.Print str
  myMessage.HTMLBody = str
  
'' Finally, save the modified message
'' If this line is disabled, you can't run the code from the preview mode
  'myMessage.Save
  Exit Sub

EmailCleaner_Error:
  MsgBox Err.Number & vbCr & Err.Description
  Exit Sub

End Sub

'==================================================
Private Function WildReplace(strExpression As String, strFind As String, _
    strReplace As String, Optional bolReplaceAll As Boolean = True, _
    Optional bolCaseSensitive As Boolean = False) As String
  'reference to Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions NOT required... uses late binding
  'requires VBScript 5 = IE 5.x
  'perform minimal parameter checking
  If (strExpression = vbNullString) Or (strFind = vbNullString) Then
    WildReplace = strExpression
    Exit Function
  End If
  'Dim objregexp As regexp
  Dim objregexp As Object
  'instantiate regexp object
  'Set objregexp = New regexp
  Set objregexp = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
  objregexp.IgnoreCase = Not bolCaseSensitive
  objregexp.Global = bolReplaceAll
  ' Pattern syntax: Visual Basic Scripting Edition-Pattern Property
  objregexp.Pattern = strFind
  
  'outer lines temporarily replace the line feeds to avoid the wildcard search tripping on them
  strExpression = Replace(strExpression, vbCrLf, "zxzx")
    strExpression = objregexp.Replace(strExpression, strReplace)
  WildReplace = Replace(strExpression, "zxzx", vbCrLf)
  
  Set objregexp = Nothing
End Function

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Note to readers: the Lounge software interprets a lower case as a line break and strips it. It will display the tag in uppercase. So in the post above, where there is an inexplicable line break, you probably need to reinsert the lower case . Or if you see an upper case , you should replace it with lower case, to avoid potential case sensitivity problems with matching.

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Oops, the attachment was lost in the great server hard drive crash. I can’t find that .txt file, but this is what I currently have in Outlook:

Sub UnIndentHTML()
' Remove BLOCKQUOTE and other tags which cause annoying indenting in HTML messages
If Inspectors.Count = 0 Then
MsgBox "Please open an HTML-format message before running this macro!", _
vbExclamation + vbOKOnly
Exit Sub
End If
If ActiveInspector.EditorType olEditorHTML Then
MsgBox "This macro is for HTML-format messages only, sorry!", _
vbExclamation + vbOKOnly
Exit Sub
End If
If MsgBox("Remove the BLOCKQUOTE tags and MARGIN-LEFT settings from this message?", _
vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbNo Then Exit Sub
Dim msg As MailItem
Set msg = ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
' Remove end tag and then start tag for BLOCKQUOTE
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, "", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "

", vbNullString)
' Remove MARGIN-LEFT property and then clean up empty style tags, if any
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "MARGIN-LEFT: [0-9.]+in", vbNullString)
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, " style=""""", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
' Kill background image and everything else in the BODY tag (normal, Word)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "", "")
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "", "")
If InStr(1, msg.HTMLBody, "

0 Then
If MsgBox("Remove the UL tags from this message? UL tags may be used for " & _
"indenting, but also bulleted lists.", _
vbQuestion + vbYesNo) = vbYes Then
' Remove end tag and then start tag for UL
msg.HTMLBody = Replace(msg.HTMLBody, "[/list]", vbNullString, , , vbTextCompare)
msg.HTMLBody = WildReplace(msg.HTMLBody, "

", vbNullString)
End If
End If
Set msg = Nothing
End Sub

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