I got the blues...I got the blues so bad...
I can't get my text back to black.
Makes me feel so sad.

What can I do? I checked options.
I couldn't find nothin' to do.

So I'm blue...hopelessly blue...until you...help me thru...

It turns out, she'd just reinstalled Outlook on her machine, and, as you may know, when Outlook is first installed, it defaults to sending text out that's colored blue.

So you want your text back?
You want it all black.
What's with that, Jack?

I think it's Options from the Tools menu you seek.
Click the Mail Format Tab, you'll feel like a geek.
Then a quick click of the Fonts button,
It'll make you feel like a glutton...
Oh, yeah, you try rhyming the word button!
Even the rhyming dictionary ain't coming up with nuttin'.

Choose your font, any of the three,
When you're there, you'll see
Styles and sizes and samples and scripts
And, of course colors, even black as a crypt.

Change the color, that's all you need to do.
Tap OK a bunch of times, and no more will you be blue.

And there you have it. No more blue text. And yes, this is how we spend our time. We're editors, you see. Sometimes, you just gotta rhyme. Don't be dour, don't even glower. And do, please do, take a shower. We're here, chuckling with glee, 'cause we got bad poetry into this week's OutlookPower.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.