Calendar conversion for rich text

This topic details the conversion method for rich text calendar entries from IBM® Notes® when displayed in Microsoft™ Outlook.

Conversion to plain text

When communicating via the ActiveSync protocol, Outlook does not support rich text descriptions, such as those that can be created in Notes® - for example, multiple font sizes, colors, tables, etc. To provide the best experience for an Outlook user viewing a calendar entry containing rich content, elements like tables are converted into the closest plain text representation of the data. For proper alignment of table columns, this requires that the user have a monospace font set for viewing plain text in Outlook:
  • In Outlook, select File > Options > Mail > Stationery and Fonts.
  • From the Personal Stationery tab, under Composing and reading plain text messages, click the Font button.
  • Select Courier New and 9pt (recommended), then click OK.
Note: This information is derived from Microsoft™ forums.

Configuring rule width

The width that the IMSA server uses to format tables and horizontal rules is configurable via the following INI parameter:
  • NTS_CALENDAR_CONVERSION_WIDTH
This parameter defaults to a value of 161 which means that, by default, a table created in Notes® will be 161 characters wide in the formatted, plain text version synced to Outlook.