Question about Outlook Express

Using WLM 2012 and Windows 7 fully updated (new computer).

Whenever I receive an e-mail, such as all the newsletters I subscribe to, all that is shown in the Reading Pane is text and links instead of a formatted document that looks like a web page.  However, if I bring up a  Reply To or Forward window of that e-mail, all the formatting is correct.

Also there is an attachment ATTxxxx.html attachment.  If I click that the correctly formatted mail comes up in my Firefox browser.

This seems to be an extremely onerous way of having to read e-mail, as I'm used to Outlook Express and Vista's Windows Mail, where everything came up automatically in the Reading Pane.

There's also a line in the Options box along the lines of "Show images and external content sent from addresses in Safe Senders List" that I have checked I put a couple of these addresses in that Safe Senders List and then they seem to come through with a row of pictures at the top to open separately, but that distroyes the whole flow of the e-mail and it's just as unusable. 

I also have hundreds of saved e-mails that I've imported that are now in this state and I need to get them back as they were before in WM.

Do you have any suggestions?  I've spent hours going through different options without success.

The e-mail account is a POP3 account from my ISP, Time Warner (Roadrunner)

Thanks much.