... & I think it'll let you select larger font representations.

That's only for the inbox folder.

What I'm looking for here is the same zoom functionality that they get in emails received from outside of our company, as well as emails sent internally via iNotes or Verse on mobile.

My guess is that this has something to do with html, but if anyone has any tips here, I'd be very happy

File - Preferences - Fonts and Colors ==> set Font Size to 'Extra Large Fonts' - for the whole Client to be increased in size.

File - Preferences - Fonts and Colors ==> increase the size of Mail view font - Only the display in the Views will be increased in size.

There is also the Client Notes.ini variable displayfontadjustment which will multiply the OS Font size by the number you give e.g. 'displayfontadjustment=5' will make the fonts 5 times bigger than the OS Font.  [ I think this should still be available in R9 ]

One or a combination of these should remove the need to zoom in and out.

Yes, seems like the only solution is to be to go to Fonts and Colors and increase the font size for the entire client. Strange that you can't have an html view of internal emails sent from other Notes clients.

I find that external emails sent as text also don't allow me to change the size via ctrl+ or ctrl-, so I suspect that you're seeing that only HTML do allow it, and not all external mails.

What happens if you change the 'Format preference for incoming mail:' for this user to 'Prefers MIME' ?