E-mail Stationery in Outlook Express 6

The most common problem when displaying stationery in Outlook Express 6 is due to security settings. As of version 6, Microsoft changed the Outlook Express defaults to disable a number of features, including scripting.

Microsoft changed the security settings because of recent viruses which exploited bugs in "ActiveX".  Unfortunately, at the same time as Microsoft disabled ActiveX, they also disabled scripting.

Scripting is used by most types of e-mail stationery. We believe that scripting is safe. All viruses to date which have used HTML e-mail have used either attachments or loopholes in "ActiveX" security. As far as we know, simple scripting cannot be used to transmit viruses.

If you receive a stationery which was created with Scrippy and you have scripting disabled, you will see a message saying that your e-mail program is not displaying the message as intended.  Below that you'll see some colored areas and the message text, but you won't see all the images, frames, scrolling effects, etc.

There are two ways to re-enable scripting in Outlook Express 6:

1) Enable scripting but keep ActiveX disabled. This keeps a high level of e-mail security on your computer. You will be able to view most kinds of stationery, including all stationery which is created using Scrippy. Click here for instructions.

2) Enable scripting and ActiveX. This results in the same settings as were used in Outlook Express before version 6. These settings create a small vulnerability to viruses which exploit bugs in ActiveX controls. (A past example was the "Kakworm" virus.) The risk is small if you:  run an up-to-date anti-virus program, never open unknown e-mail attachments, use Windows Update regularly to apply new bug fixes, and exercise caution in saying "Yes" to popup questions about allowing ActiveX controls to run. If you want to enable scripting and ActiveX, click here for instructions.