mail-merge vs layout :-}

[eNGiNe]

OK, I've inherited a task from a colleague while she's away … using MailMerge to send a formatted e-mail to various people in the company. (so, everyone's using Outlook)

From other examples of these mails I've seen, people are accustomed to a specific layout: a fairly narrow, centred text area with a banner image. Not rocket-science, and custom margin settings let me prepare exactly what I want to send. But as soon as I click on Mailings > Start MailMerge > email, Word changes to web layout and discards the custom margin.

Assuming ( ) this is an appropriate approach in the first place, how do set up the message so that the layout is preserved? I know how to code it myself in .html, but that doesn't really help just now.