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Thursday 18 January 2007

What Really Happened with HTML and CSS in Outlook 2007

People working with HTML email have always had under-represented voices in the way various software vendors implement HTML and CSS into their mail software. Recently, Microsoft Outlook 2007 has made major changes to the way Outlook renders email, and developers are naturally, and understandably concerned.

To that end I took the question to colleagues at Microsoft in order to see what I could find out. I have to admit that after having been so focused on working with IE7 and other prioritizations, it never occurred to me or anyone else at WaSP in the Microsoft / WaSP Task Force to even ask about rendering in Office products. What a kerfuffle, as Lou would tell Andy in Little Britain.

As it turns out, in past versions, Outlook used two rendering engines. IE’s for reading content, and Word for composing messages. What this meant was that if you were replying or forwarding HTML emails, previous versions of Outlook would first use IE’s rendering engine to view it, then would switch over to the compose engine, Word.

While wrangling this is a no-brainer for Web designers and developers accustomed to working with a variety of tools, typical users were finding enough inconsistencies between what they were creating and what they were receiving that it became apparent the rendering and editing engines should be the same. This makes sense from a programmatic as well as use standpoint in the long term as well.

So, the IE engine was removed and the updated Word engine is now serving both needs within Outlook 2007. Of course, some stuff is breaking. Fortunately, there’s some documentation to help designers and developers know just what is and isn’t supported in Outlook 2007, at least theoretically. No, this isn’t fun news, as it means we’ll be learning what’s problematic as we go, and at worst disrupting our own user/customer relationships.

So when we’re done kicking and screaming over Yet Another Interoperability Muckup that we will have to account for, let us try to dry our tears, put on bandaids where necessary, give magic kisses and plan how we’re going to fix this.

I’m currently gathering and doing some tests to compare what the documentation says and the rendering of Office 2007 actually does. It’ll become a bit clearer where the holes are after we begin to put the software through its paces.

Please comment as to your experiences and include any links to problem cases. I promise to make sure the top priorities and concerns get in front of the right eyes. Microsoft was very clear in letting me know that if we want a feature and need it and get an organized list to them, those issues will be addressed and prioritized as the new engine develops in response to developer needs, too.

See the following sources for more details on which HMTL and CSS standards are and aren’t supported:

Enter your woes and wishes in the comment field below.

Filed under:   general
Posted by:   Molly | 00:25 | Comments (479)

Comments (479)

  1. Program says Thursday 13 November 2008 at 07:28

    We use a tool that delivers emails via html.

  2. Pingback: Beaconfire Wire » Blog Archive » Outlook 2007 to Use MS Word to Display HTML Emails (Best of the Beaconfire Wire)

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  7. Alex Krenvalk says Wednesday 10 December 2008 at 08:38

    For solve this problems advise try-outlook problem cannot view emails,some time ago my friends were in this situation and used as how as they said-it,tool helped their,as far as they know program is free,utility can help to extract all files with *.eml, *.vcf and *.txt extensions from *.ost file, when you cannot access your mail account, stored on Microsoft Exchange Server,will quickly scan all hard drives and find it. If current user has only one profile and its data is stored in a *.pst file, the path will be automatically displayed in the dialog box,can convert the data to a file with *.pst extension, that can be opened with any mail client, when cannot view Outlook emails.

  9. mutfak says Monday 22 December 2008 at 08:15

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    it is very useful ,thank you ver much for your working

  14. Cornan says Monday 26 January 2009 at 10:35

    My biggest probem is that Outlook CHANGES perfectly good (and SIMPLE) HTML on REPLY or FORWARD.

    All I have is a couple of nested s, to flick background colors this way and that, and Outlook simply mucks them up (reference not needed) even though the user doing FORWARD or REPLY has not edited even a single letter within those HTML blocks.

    The Outlook HTML support (the one they threw away) didn’t have this “change it for no reason” problem.

  15. Cornan says Monday 26 January 2009 at 10:35

    My biggest probem is that Outlook CHANGES perfectly good (and SIMPLE) HTML on REPLY or FORWARD.

    All I have is a couple of nested s, to flick background colors this way and that, and Outlook simply mucks them up (reference not needed) even though the user doing FORWARD or REPLY has not edited even a single letter within those HTML blocks.

    The Outlook HTML support (the one they threw away) didn’t have this “change it for no reason” problem.

  16. André says Monday 26 January 2009 at 15:22

    I say “dont use outlook 2007”. Money seems to be the only language MS understand! If we all stoped useing the mail-client they would have to listen or go down the drain. For me its either way.

    I’m a owner of a webdesign firm and we have now stoped trying to develop decent html e-mails for outlook.make a plaintext version and put in a link “If you use outlook click here” in the top of the e-mail. It saves us the trouble and our clients the devlopment money – and the have not felt any loss in profit.

  17. Dr. Dean says Tuesday 27 January 2009 at 23:45

    For me – a long time Outlook user – the problem that is driving me away from Outlook 2007 is that reading incoming html email is painfully slow. I have two very fast PCs and very fast Internet connections yet when I view an html email on either one in the reading pane (or opening the message) I can sit and watch as the placeholders oh so slowly get replaced with a graphic or whatever. It makes it annoyingly impossible to quickly scan through large numbers of email using one-key reading or even clicking messages. Outlook 2003 and prior were wonderful from my perspective with the one exception of problems with Word as editor. But I could turn that feature off and everything was fine.

    What went wrong with Outlook 2007?

    It reminds me of the 90s with a 9600 baud modem.

  18. George says Wednesday 28 January 2009 at 09:57

    I have the same problem that Dr Dean mentions above. What is Microsoft going to do about Outlook 2007 rendering html email slowness? It seems like this problem should have been fixed long ago with some optimization to Office Word 2007 rendering engine.

  19. Ryan says Monday 2 February 2009 at 11:18

    André, I love your solution.

    Are they ever going to actually change anything? Or is all this complaining for nothing? The reason for the change has to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. Why not create some additional tag that MS Word could have added to the beginning of the email, which would switch the rendering to that. These Word emails will not magically render right in any other Email client because they “fixed” Outlook, why not be smarter and fix Word.

    “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored” – Aldous Huxley

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  21. Vernon says Tuesday 10 February 2009 at 13:54

    The entire open source community can follow a single set of standards across a massive array of software products for a variety of platforms. Yet an “industry leader” can create and enforce (through lack of alternatives) a set of standards all to their own for each singular component in a single suite of software products (or at least is claimed to be a single suite) for a single platform?

    Can it really be that an internationally distributed network of developers is better at adhering to standards than a collection of dedicated teams working under one employer?

    Come on Microsoft, you can and should be capable of doing just a little better than this. Maybe you could get some of the project leads in the open source community to help you with system design for cohesion, clarity and a SINGLE SET OF STANDARDS.

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  28. Guía local de empresas y profesionales donostia - san sebastian says Wednesday 11 March 2009 at 12:58

    Really, the Outlook 2007 have many problems with HTML and CSS.

    We will see that such it is the windows 7

  29. Generator Boy says Wednesday 18 March 2009 at 16:32

    How about scrapping Word both for HTML rendering AND email editing in Outlook? Do people really need a full-blown word processor to write an email? What was wrong with the previous HTML editor that came with Outlook and why was it scrapped? Using Word to edit emails does nothing but add bloat. Using Word to render HTML does nothing but destroy standards-compliant HTML emails. Bad call Microsoft.

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