How to Indent in Outlook Email? [While Forwarding and Replying]

Adding indent spaces before the original message while replying and forwarding in Microsoft Outlook manually is quite difficult.

Outlook allows users to modify and customize the setting to set required changes automatically.

Before getting deeper, let’s understand:

What is Indent in Outlook Email?

What Indent in Outlook Email does?

Indent is a good tool to keep things lined up in the email message.

It can separate the original email message from the replied and forwarded one.

Indent increase or decrease of space between the left and right margin of a paragraph.

To indent text, move the cursor to the front of the line and press the Tab on the keyboard.

How to Add or Remove Indent from Messages in Outlook?

By default, while forwarding or replying email message: “Including original message text” will act.

You can customize it to “Include and indent original message text“.

Here are the steps to execute:

  • Open Microsoft Outlook
  • Click the File tab from the top left-hand corner of the screen >> Options that open the Outlook Options dialog box.
  • Select Mail from the left-hand bar of the screen.
  • From the Right-hand bar, go to the Replies and forward option, Select the Include and indent original message text option from the When replying to a message drop-down list.
Include and indent original message text

There are other options that you can select the manage the email while replies and forwarding in Outlook.

  1. Do not include the original message.
  2. Attach original message.
  3. Include original message text (which is the default)
  4. Prefix each line of the original message.
  • Finally, Click Ok to complete.

Now check out one of your emails received which you need to reply to, from now onwards when replying to emails in Outlook, the original message will be indented automatically.

You will observe a slight shift in the trailing mail.

Add Or Remove Indent From Replying Messages In Outlook

The above method is a permanent solution, you don’t have to indent the previous emails while replying to or forwarding them individually.

How to Add or Remove Indent Manually for one Message in Outlook?

Most of the time you need to indent a specific email while replying or forwarding, you can opt for manual adjustment.

Open the email and click reply, select your trailing email using the mouse, Alt + A, Ctrl + Shift + End, and click Format Text >> Select Increase Indent to add space or Decrease Indent  to remove spaces.

Format Text

Final Thought

Apart from this, you can use the TAB key to add an indent to the paragraph’s first line. Indent helps the user to separate the email in conversation view.

Prefixing each line of the original message is also an integrating feature that was loved by the majority of users.

Also Read:

Leave a Comment