Who is affected?

IMAP and OWA email client users.

More details:

IT has received reports from some IMAP users that when they receive email via IMAP, HTML email is sometimes returned as plain text.  When the same email was viewed via a MAPI or OWA client the email was correctly rendered as HTML. The root cause of the issue is that Exchange 2007 stores messages differently than 2003 did.  This difference in storage means that messages must be converted when they are delivered via IMAP and by default Exchange inspects each message downloaded via IMAP and attempts to guess what the correct format should be.  In practice it was not always doing a good job of correctly determining the correct format.  We have made a configuration change that will result in all email being provided to IMAP clients as both HTML and Text.  In testing this resolves the issue with some HTML messages not being delivered correctly.

Problem resolution:

The root cause of the issue is that Exchange 2007 stores messages differently than Exchange 2003.  This difference in storage means that messages must be converted when they are delivered via IMAP and by default Exchange inspects each message downloaded via IMAP and attempts to determine what the correct format should be. In practice Exchange was not always choosing the correct format.  IT has made a configuration change that will deliver email to IMAP clients as both HTML and Text.  In testing this has resolved the issue.

Information Technology apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause you. Please contact your departmental consultant, call the Help Desk at 766-HELP (4357), option 1, or send an email to the Help Desk (userhelp@uwyo.edu) if you have any questions.