This post provides a brief explanation of how the body of a message (HTML in particular) is handled by the different versions of Outlook (Outlook 97, Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook XP and Outloo...
Updated Jul 01, 2019
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How different versions of Outlook and Exchange deal with HTML message body?
Um, are you sure about Exchange 5.5? If Exchange 5.5 didn't support HTML messages, then how could you use Outlook Express, for example, to send an HTML message over Exchange?
My impression, having launched Exchange 5.5 and being involved in many of the perf tests, is that Exchange 5.5 *always* generates the RTF property when encountering an HTML message, and then stores the RTF alongside the HTML. This of course is a performance and storage bummer if none of your Internet-native clients understand RTF to begin with.
Exchange 2000 (and 2003) doesn't do any conversion from HTML to RTF at all, unless the message is specifically requested by an RTF client. From that point, the RTF bodypart is available on the message; no further conversion is necessary should other RTF clients request the same message.
Chris
My impression, having launched Exchange 5.5 and being involved in many of the perf tests, is that Exchange 5.5 *always* generates the RTF property when encountering an HTML message, and then stores the RTF alongside the HTML. This of course is a performance and storage bummer if none of your Internet-native clients understand RTF to begin with.
Exchange 2000 (and 2003) doesn't do any conversion from HTML to RTF at all, unless the message is specifically requested by an RTF client. From that point, the RTF bodypart is available on the message; no further conversion is necessary should other RTF clients request the same message.
Chris