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Open Outlook Messages With Your Browser

In my last article, Save Outlook Embedded Pictures in Their Original Format, I told about a method of saving embedded files, such as animated gifs in their default format, which Outlook amazingly will not do. But what if you want to save the entire message as an html file with all the attachments, or even to properly view certain html-formatted emails that do not render correctly in Outlook, which by default uses the rendering engine from Microsoft Word?

Well, the same website, HowTo-Outlook.com, that produced the save embedded files trick has another trick up it's sleeve. Open Message in Internet Browser (or you can set it up for your preferred browser, such as Firefox) will, as the title says, open an Outlook email message in your browser. The site's author, Robert Sparnaaij, has written a short Visual Basic macro to display any Outlook message in your preferred browser by clicking a button. It is very easy to follow the instructions, as you basically just need to copy a few lines of code from the web page.

Once you have your new macro setup, you can directly open any message in your browser with gif and flash animations, advanced css formatting and HTML accessibility support not offered by the default Word rendering. And, of course, once your message is displayed in your browser, you can save the entire message as html with all embedded images, or just save selected images to save in their original format. In both cases, your animated gifs will actually be animated!

Now why didn't Microsoft think of that?