Hallelujah......I deleted the temp files and compacted the email folders......seems to be working. At least I only got my test message once. thank you so much....... let me know when your next wedding is and I'll come and sing Rosie

Owbist: You beat me to it! I just wrote this all out - too good to delete - so I'll publish it anyway :-) Try this: Open Create Mail then click view > Toolbars > Check the Formatting bar. There should then be a formatting bar just at the top of the mssg pane you will be typing in. Now you should see B I U A for bold, Italic, Underline, Color. Now when you highlight a word just click on the A in the format bar to pick the color instead of thrashnig all the way thru the format maze..... If this formatting bar does not appear you are not in Rich Text format. You don't say if you are having this problem with newly created mail or when replying. If you go to the main window > Tools > Options > Send > then see if there is a check in the "Reply to mssg using same format in which they were sent". Uncheck that and see if it fixes you up. In other words if you relpy to a mssg recieved in HTML you have no choice but HTML formatting unless you uncheck as above.

Just a quick update to anyone who may (or may not!) be interested in my original problem... After literally weeks of frustrating searches, futile attempts and dead-ends, I wiped Outlook Express from my computer and downloaded Thunderbird...it's a real gem! I did lose my old address book (but luckily I had a replica within Hotmail), but DID keep all sent/deleted/saved messages...can easily rebuild address book as people email me...messages to my old OE address still arrive at new Thunderbird one, so I'm a very happy chappy! Regards to all, Shax

Don't know if this will work for mail that gets sent to the task bar but it works for the size of the mail... Just open one of the mails and re-size it to the size you want, don't close it, then open another mail and do the same thing... The close them both using the X in the upper right corner of the mail... Open another one and see if that fixed it... Rita