How should I use Outlook to send code snippets

Question

As a programmer at a big corporation  I frequently send Outlook emails that contain code samples   I ll actually type code directly into an email   This inevitably causes problems  as Outlook really likes to format text in pleasing but unhelpful ways   My code needs to be copyable out of the email and directly into code  so I don t want Outlook to mess with it by adding special characters or whatnot   So I always need to tweak options like    Don t capitalize first letter of every sentence  else all my functions be Public instead of public  Disable smart quotes  fancy quotes don t copy paste out of emails well  Never use spell checker  because it just gets annoying    I also like my code to be in a monospaced font  black  indented  and smaller than other text   I ve tried to make a Style for this  but for some reason the Style never saves   -   edit  turns out I wasn t telling it to work on  new documents based on this template    Is there some way to put code in  lt pre gt  blocks or something that tells Outlook to ignore all these rules and format code the way I want it to   If not  what ways have you found to send code snippets in Outlook emails without it getting super annoying

User · Accepted Answer

If you are using Outlook 2010  you can define your own style and select your formatting you want  in the Format options there is one option for Language  here you can specify the language and specify whether you want spell checker to ignore the text with this style   With this style you can now paste the code as text and select your new style  Outlook will not correct the text and will not perform the spell check on it   Below is the summary of the style I have defined for emailing the code snippets   Do not check spelling or grammar  Border  Box   Single solid line  Orange   0 5 pt Line width  Pattern  Clear  Custom Color RGB 253 253 217     Style  Linked  Automatically update  Quick Style Based on  HTML Preformatted

User · Answer

I came across this looking for a way to format things better in an email to a co-worker  I ended up discovering that if you copy from Visual Studio Code  FREE  it retains the formatting  highlighting and everything else  This editor works with everything and has modules for every programming language I ve ever encountered   Looks beautiful in the email

User · Answer

When I paste code into Outlook or have sentences containing code or technical syntax I get annoyed by all of the red squiggles that identify spelling errors    If you want Outlook to clear all of the red spellcheck squiggles you can add a button to the Quick Access Toolbar that calls a VBA macro and removes all squiggles from the current document   I prefer to run this macro separate from my style choice because I often use it on a selection of text that has mixed content   For syntax highlighting I use the Notepad   technique already listed by  srujanreddy  though I discovered that the right-click context menu option a bit handier than navigating the Plugins menu     If you get annoyed by spell check while you are preparing your email you can add a button to your quick access toolbar that will remove the red squiggles from the message body  See this article   https   stackoverflow com a 49865743 1898524    outlook-vba

User · Answer

Years later I have a response    Use an online code highlighter like http   tohtml com  to highlight your code so you can paste marked up code from your IDE into Word  Depending on your IDE you may be able to skip this step  In Word 2010  go to insert- object- openDocument Text  Steps 2-3 are documented at How do you display code snippets in MS Word preserving format and syntax highlighting   Paste your highlighted code into the object  Copy the whole object  Right-click-  paste special the object into Outlook     This gives you a highlighted  contained box of code for use in emails in Outlook 2010

User · Answer

If you do not want to attach code in a file  this was a good tip  ChssPly76  I need to check it out   you can try changing the default message format messages to rich text  Tools - Options - Mail Format - Message format  instead of HTML  I learned that Outlook s HTML formatting screws code layout  btw  Outlook uses MS Word s HTML rendering engine which sucks big time   but rich text works fine  So if I copy code from Visual Studio and paste it in Outlook message  when using rich text  it looks pretty good  but when in HTML mode  it s a disaster  To disable smart quotes  auto-correction  and other artifacts  set up the appropriate option via Tools - Options - Spelling - Spelling and AutoCorrection  you may also want to play with copy-paste settings  Tools - Options - Mail Format - Editor Options - Cut  copy  and paste

User · Answer

Would sending the mail as plain-text sort this    How to Send a Plain Text Message in Outlook          Select Actions   New Mail Message Using   Plain Text from the menu in Outlook    Create your message as usual    Click Send to deliver it       Being plain text it shouldn t screw up your code  with  smart  quotes  auto-capitalisation and such   Another possible option  if this is a common problem within the company perhaps you could setup an internal code-paste site  there s plenty of open-source ones around  like Open Pastebin

User · Answer

If you have notepad   installed in your pc  then you can copy text as RTF  Rich Text Format  and paste it in your outlook mail   1  Paste you code snippet into notepad    2  From Menu bar navigate to  Plugins -  NppExport -  Copy RTF to clipboard   3  Paste into your email  4  Done

User · Answer

Here s what works for me  and is quickest and causes the least amount of pain   annoyance     1   Paste you code snippet into sublime  make sure your syntax is looking good   2  Right click and choose  Copy as RTF   3  Paste into your email  4  Done

User · Answer

If you attach your code as a text file and your recipient s  have  show attachments inline  option set  I believe it s set by default   Outlook should not mangle your code but it will be copy paste-able directly from email

[outlook] How should I use Outlook to send code snippets?

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