>I want the email body to have the contents of the coppins.doc
>So i set the body as loEmail.Body = FileToStr("c:\my documents\the coppins.doc")
>The resultant email is rubbish with all different font sizes
>If I set the email body as coppins.htm - the resultant email is OK
>Is FileToStr("c:\my documents\the coppins.doc") the wrong way of specifying a document as body of mail?

yes
email clients expect only pure text or html streams and some clients are set not show html.
other file formats should be set as attachments, so clients can try to open other applications to show attachment