That is such an annoying feature of Outlook. I'm not sure, but I think later versions have a "smart tag" to allow you to change the formatting to match the destination, but Outlook 2000 and earlier don't have it. Just one of my many gripes about Outlook.
In Praise of Emoticons:
Pick out a pleasant OUTLOOK
Stick out that noble chin
Wipe out that full-of-doubt look
Slap on a happy GRIN
And spread sunshine all over the place
Just put on a HAPPY FACE
Have you tried Edit-Paste Special? It may not be quite what you wanted, but you paste as RTF, or for you, unformated text.
Copy/paste into Notepad and then into Outlook (or powerpoint or whatever). Notepad doesn't have formatting so Outlook uses the source formatting.
I keep Notepad on my quick launch bar and often find it useful.
Yeah, I know this trick, but...ugh. The idea that the default behavior should be to preserve font size and face and color just makes my head hurt. It's such a non-user-centric, what an engineer would think is cool approach.
In defense of colorful email....
AOL just changed its email format (as always, without notice), but this time they added the ability to adjust fonts, colors etc. and I love it! I've hated being stucek with *---* when I want to emphasize something.
No, I don't mind different fonts and colors and stuff...I'm past the day when I thought Pure Text Only is the only way for email...it's just if I cut and paste something in from a browser or Word document, I want the text to have MY font and color, so my email isn't a mishmash of my font and color and then the ones of whatever I'm cutting and pasting..