Problems with Outlook

[DavidP]

We are sending out a newsletter that is compiled using PHP scripts, and we send this newsletter to thousands of users every month.

We have received feedback from subscribers who use Outlook that the newsletter is not displaying correctly: instead of being HTML formatted, they see the HTML code itself.

I already know about the Outlook 2007 issue about using the Word 2007 rendering engine instead of the IE rendering engine, but our problem cannot deal with that, because no HTML rendering is happening at all. The subscribers simply see the HTML code in plain-text view.

Considering it is happening with a lot of people, and they are all using Outlook, we figure Outlook probably needs some type of extra flag or header sent with the email to indicate that the email should be HTML formatted, but I would like more information on this. Does anyone know what the problem could be? Is there any header that is specific to Outlook that we need to include in the email message to tell Outlook to display it as HTML content and not plain text?

The emails are being displayed in all other mail programs that we know of (Thunderbird, Mac OS X Mail, etc.)

Thanks.

 

[KSoD]

It could jsut be that they do not have their email options set up to recieve email in HTML format. They have to check their settings. Also they have to allow the sender to see the email in html everytime.

For them to allow the sender everytime tell them to right click on the email. Under the Junk Email option there is a selection in there that says "add sender domain to safe sender list" and "add sender to safe senders list". They must do that for your newsletter for them to be able to recieve it in HTML everytime you send it.

The other option about allowing email to be accepted in HTML is under the Tools>Options>mail format section. This is in Outlook 2007 that i am going off of. I am not sure if it is exactly the same in Outlook 2003. But they have to go into that setting and make sure they have HTML as their preferred way to recieve mail.

After they have given the newsletter the safe sender exception they should be able to view it in HTML with no problem.