Question - What is the difference between sending e-mail messages in TEXT mode or in HTML?
Answer -
E-mail can be sent in either plain text or HTML-formatted. So what exactly does that mean? Well, originally, e-mail was based on just straight text. What you typed was what you saw. With the new HTML-formatted e-mails, you can include pictures, hyperlinks, and other web page characteristics in your e-mails. It's almost like composing a web page within an e-mail message. Unfortunately, if the person you are sending an HTML-formatted message to is using an e-mail program that doesn't support HTML, they'll get a message with a lot of HTML tags (, , , etc.) scattered throughout the text. The good news is that most e-mail programs default to the plain text format as long as you don't include any pictures, or other HTML elements.
To check your e-mail program's settings, check the Options or Preferences and look for the "Formatting" section. This should tell you how your outgoing messages are being formatted. If there is no such option, you can be pretty sure that you're only sending plain text messages.