pasting TAB characters in eMail

[fleabag]

I have a script that sets the contents of a global field with the values of many fields and records separated with a tab. I had to paste a tab from a text editor between " " to work. This global is then used as the contents of an email where the recipient simply has to paste the entire contents into excel and the tabs magically separate the values into the correct cells.

I had this working a while ago, but for some reason, it is not working anymore. The email tabs are gone and now just spaces so it gets pasted into excel each line in a single cell.

I have zipped this file a number of times, transferred from mac to win to mac a number of times and something has changed.

Hint: If I copy the contents of my global field and paste directly in excel, it works. So somehow, I think my email settings are off somewhere.

I have tried outlook express and thunderbird (win) with no success. I now need this to work for a demo on a win laptop tomorrow and need some helpful ideas of what to check.

I have pasted new "tabs" in the script and it has not helped

fmp 7v3, win2K

[fleabag]

More info.

So if I copy the contents of the global (which has data separated by tabs from a script) and paste into excel, it works fine with each data going to a unique cell

If I copy from the global into the text of an email, it appears to have tabs, but reselecting the text from the unsent email and pasting into excel does not have tabs, just spaces.

It is as if the system does not recognize the tabs. font = arial.

Tinkering with the email program settings (thunderbird) has revealed no pattern to me yet.

[fleabag]

More info.

Tried this on a mac and the tabs are retained in the mail.app. I have gotten this to work with Outlook for win as well.

So this is related to a setting within outlook express and/or thunderbird.

I have been looking at the compose settings (HTML/rich text/plain text) settings and somehow these do not make a difference on the particular machine I have to use now.

grrr.