html emails converted to attachments in Outlook

Report · Oct 02, 2018

Hi, I use Dreamweaver to create emails for large mailing lists. Up until about 2 weeks ago, everything worked as usual, displayed properly in MS Outlook. Now MS Outlook (and maybe other desktop clients) are converted the html to an attachment, displaying nothing in the body of the email. Totally blank.

These same emails look fine on my iPhone and are displaying correctly.

Anyone run into this recently? Is it a bug with the new updates?

Thanks,

Pati

Report · Oct 02, 2018

It's most likely nothing to do with DW. It could be the email client, or something in how the emails are being sent. AFAIK, just creating an HTML page for email wouldn't be any different in DW than, say, Notepad. How are you sending the emails?

V/r,

^ _ ^

Report · Oct 02, 2018

Thanks for the quick response! They are going through FIS Global Marketing software called Connections. Has never happened before...something just in the last couple weeks. What I've been reading is that it could be an Outlook html editor rendering issue.

Report · Oct 02, 2018

Outlook is possibly the worst e-mail client out there. Are you using an industy tested e-mail template?

https://zurb.com/playground/responsive-email-templates

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Oct 02, 2018

Yes...thank you for sharing that link. I use the Dreamweaver templates; until now, I had no issues.

Report · Oct 04, 2018

This really sounds like an issue with the sending server in whatever it is doing to your email prior to it being sent out. I would recommend opening a support ticket with your email service provider (ESP) so that they can look into this for you. As bad as Outlook is as a modern email client, there's nothing that tells it to get the email as an attachment. The ESP server would be what is creating the attachment when the email is sent out.

Report · Dec 06, 2018

So as a follow up to our conversation, I would like to note that emails minus CSS styles seem to display ok. However, I lose the nice look and feel that they create. Any suggestions on that part? Is there anyone that is an expert coder that could help?

Thanks!!

Report · Dec 06, 2018

How are you adding your CSS?

If it's in the <head> of the page, that's not a good idea, there are several very popular email clients that ignore everything in the <head> tag.

Use inline css within your HTML instead...

If you already are placing your css as inline, we'd likely need to see the code of one of your emails to give you an idea what might be happening to them.

Report · Dec 06, 2018

I'll try that, thank you.

Report · Dec 06, 2018

That did help, but it is still coming over as an "archived" html attachment, but at least now if you open the attachment, it displays properly in IE. It won't open within Outlook itself. I'm using one of my tech friends to test outside of my workplace because on my workstation, it opens in Outlook. Having said that, he's using the same version as me and we went through every option and they're configured alike.

My sending server support said it was the CSS code in the head section, but I moved it down, and it it's behaving almost the same. Frustrating....:(

Report · Dec 06, 2018

E-mail is primarily a text based form of communication. Outlook has the worst support for HTML and CSS of any e-mail client out there. With that in mind, keep your e-mail simple. Don't try to make it into a web page because that's exactly what Outlook will treat as an attached file. If you want to make a web page, put it online and give your e-mail recipients a link to it.

That said, try the HTML E-mail Templates from the site below. They're heavily commented so you can take out what you don't need.

Cerberus - Patterns for Responsive HTML Email Templates

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator
Alt-Web Design & Publishing ~ Web : Print : Graphics : Media

Report · Dec 06, 2018

Thank you Nancy!! I'm using the dreamweaver email template, but it adds the CSS, and even though Outlook allegedly accepts CSS, it still breaks like you said...worst client!

Thanks again!

Happy Holidays!

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html emails converted to attachments in Outlook

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