[pling]

Its shit at those things as well. Months of VSTO and Outlook forms will make you realise it's a pile of crap.

[snsr]

I believe Outlook is still using Word to render HTML content in emails as well.

[oneeyedpigeon]

HTML content in emails is the real WTF. I wonder why no-one ever invented a nice markup format for email? Probably because the only type of person qualified to do that wouldn't be seen dead sending non-plain-text email.

[pbhjpbhj]

Which is ridiculous but strikes me to be done so as to ensure that emails prepared in MS Word render correctly in Outlook?

Of course they could fix MS Word's HTML output and fix Outlook to use MSIE's rendering engine ... but that'd only reduce lockin by allowing Outlook users emails to be read properly in other MUA. Never going to happen.

[frik]

The compose window of Outlook is WinWord. Outlook (up to 2003) used Trident (Internet Explorer engine) to show HTML-mails. Nowadays Outlook HTML view is powered by Word layout engine as well (for security reasons, as MS said). It cannot handle many CSS style elements, background color and is stuck with HTML 4.