Customize how Outlook desktop alerts will appear for my email recipients

Question

1. Is there any way to force Outlook to display HTML in the desktop alert instead of text for a multi-part message?
2. Is there any way to customize what text will appear? Or is it always the first 2 lines of the email?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly, but if I read your Question Title right, you're wanting to programmatically alter the new mail notification alert that appears above the system tray for users of Outlook 2003 / 2007.

The Desktop Alert has no Outlook Object Model references. You may be able to play around with one of the Win32 APIs if you're feeling really keen. But your question was whether you could change this for your mail recipients, not yourself. The answer there is a definite no. Sorry. Any code you write to manipulate the applications or environments of your recipients will be treated (by default) as hostile and won't run.