Tab in an email

[capehnc]

I am a relatively new user (not an administrator). Is there a way to tab when I'm composing an email? I could do it in Outlook Express, but I haven't been able to figure it out in Zimbra. Thanks.

[Krishopper]

What do you mean? What kind of tab?

[capehnc]

Sorry, I should have been more specific. As an example, if I'm typing something that requires columns. I would type the first item, hit the tab key and the spacing would skip forward a certain amount. Then I could type the second item. I often have to type emails where I list a product I am ordering, then tab over several spaces and list the quantity, then tab over several spaces and list the price. In Outlook Express, I could do that, but in Zimbra I have had to use the space bar to manually move the cursor over. Thanks.

[Arghknork]

I too am wondering how to do this. Anyone?

[adoland]

HTML or text? There are several entries in Bugzilla on this. There folks who remind us Zimbra is a service running in a browser and that in the browser the standard behavior of the tab key is to move between items / fields. Also there are those that feel that e-mail is a messaging system not a report writer; for that try attachments. And finally, there are those who continually push boundaries in the name of "product improvement" while distorting the original use of a tool. Whose to say?

[Arghknork]

Both HTML and text. All good reasons and excuses why it doesn't work, but not good answers. Being able to do basic formating of an email message during composition is far from "report writing", it is an expected behavior. If the developers of ZD chose to design it as a browser service then they obviously made that decision in the interest of platforminteroperability rather than quality of product. Always a tradeoff. In a world where Outlook sets the standard ZD has its work cut out for it.

[adoland]

Actually Outlook does not set the standard. The standards were set long before Outlook came along; MS made things tempting and easy, but provided a product that often broke and was a hellish nightmare to administer. Did you ever work somewhere without Exchange and get e-mails with "dat" attachments or have users complain that Exchange recipients did not receive their e-mails or attachments? Such fun Outlook is! So if you want all the glitz and wish to pay a premium price for it and pay a premium to administer it, have at Exchange. On the other hand, if you can live with 90%, you get a quality product and a bargain basement price. And believe me, this is painful because we just finished converting to Zimbra and circumstances force us to convert to Exchange. They don't know what they're wishing for.

[Arghknork]

I feel your pain. I just converted from Exchange 2010 to ZCS. I agree Micro$oft has it's disadvantage$, but they do make it easy for the consumer albeit at the cost of administration and ... well ... COST!

You sound like these people that are trying to convince me I MUST put up with dinky little cars in order to have economical and environmentally-friendly transportation. Hog-wash! We are way smarter than that. You'll never convince me we can't have a 10,000 pound car that's 20 feet long and still gets 200 MPG and emits only water vapor. Likewise, I refuse to accept that the Open-Source model means I have to accept an inferior product. Red-Hat has proven that to be incorrect. They're one of the most successful software companies in history and they did it all producing a quality Open-Source product. I believe we CAN have high-cost quality at Open-Source prices.

Sorry, got a little out of topic here. :-) I guess this is a debate that will rage for a while, even if we don't rage it here.