title: Interop.Outlook Message in HTML displayed as Plain Text
body: <p>I recently switched from using EWS to using Interop.Outlook (<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29899527/ews-pop-up-email-to-be-sent">see this article</a>).  The process is extremely easy to use!  </p>
  
  <p>Unfortunately, I have one problem that did not exist in EWS: Outlook does not process the HTML body even when BodyFormat is set to true.  In this code sample (VB.NET), the MessageBody does start with  &lt;&nbsp;HTML.  With debug, I verified that BodyFormat was set to HTML when display was executed.  Nevertheless, the email body is displayed as plain text.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Dim Outlook As New Outlook.Application
  Dim mail As Outlook.MailItem =  DirectCast(Outlook.CreateItem(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem), Outlook.MailItem)
  
  With mail
      .To = Addr
      .Subject = Subject
      .Body = MessageBody
      .BodyFormat = If(MessageBody.ToLower.StartsWith("&lt;html"),
          Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlBodyFormat.olFormatHTML,
          Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook.OlBodyFormat.olFormatPlain)
      .Display(Modal)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The exact same body text, when using EWS displays correctly.</p>