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Issues with HTML Emails in Different Email Clients

Overview

Email clients (i.e., Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail, etc.) will display emails differently.  The Email Standards Project provides a sample of how different email clients will display a sample email they created.  You can see that here https://www.email-standards.org/clients/

If you are creating an email template that uses HTML then we recommend doing a test by sending yourself the email template to see how it is displayed.

Known HTML issues for different clients

Below is a list of different email clients and some of the issues with HTML that occur.  Please note, this is not an exhaustive list of all email clients or all issues with HTML.  This is just a sample.  We recommend that you test your email templates by sending them to yourself to make sure they appear correctly.  If possible it is best to send your sample to multiple different email clients. 

Email Client HTML Support Comments
AOL 4.0 and 5.0 No
  • Text only
  • Forms are stripped
AOL 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Forms are stripped
  • Rejects email linking to external style sheets
AOL 9.0 Partial
  • Disabled HTML images and hotlinks
  • Forms are stripped
  • Long emails can be turned into .zip files
AOL Webmail Partial
  • Doesn't fully support XHTML compliance
  • Strips <br /> tags
  • Doesn't support anchor tags - clicking anchor tag links opens new inbox window instead of jumping down to the anchored section of the email
Apple Mail Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Doesn't support font tags - need to be replaced with <span> tags
  • Need to click anchor links twice for them to work
  • In El Capitain OSX, anchor links do not work at all.
Compuserve No
  • Text only
Comcast Smartzone Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Blocks background images
  • Anchor links or table of contents links open a blank window instead of jumping down to anchored section of the email
Comcast XFinity  
  • Clips long newsletters - must shorten email or link to a web page
  • Anchor links or table of contents links open a blank window instead of jumping down to anchored section of the email
Entourage (Mac) Yes
  • Standard HTML
Entourage 2008 (Mac) Partial
  • May block background images
  • Issues supporting forms, Flash or other plug-ins, CSS floats, CSS positioning, and animated GIF's
  • Replaces bullet points with images in ordered lists
Earthlink Partial
  • Occasionally will show text as underlined
Eudora 3.1 No
  • Text only
Eudora 4.0, 4.2, 4.3, and 5.0 No
  • Standard HTML supported when Internet Explorer is configured as the HTML viewer
  • Poor HTML support in default Eudora HTML viewer
Gmail Partial
  • Blocks HTML images by default
  • Doesn't support bookmark anchors
  • Clips long newsletters - must shorten email or link to a web page
  • Hyperlinks phone numbers in emails
Hotmail Partial
  • Blocks images by default
  • Strips <head>, <title>, <meta>, and <body> tags - must use inline styles
  • Disables hot links after ~4 mins. and strips background images - need to turn on authentication
  • CSS Issues
  • Text may appear underlined
  • Extra spaces added between lines of text surrounded by <p> tags - Need to change <p> tags to <div> tags in block's Code View or create a new block and recreate the text without copy and paste styles
Juno 4.0, and 5.0 Yes
  • Nearly standard HTML
  • CSS issues
Lotus Notes 4.6 No
  • No font or link colors
Lotus Notes 5.0 Yes
  • Nearly standard HTML
  • CSS issues
Novell GroupWise 5.5 Yes
  • Standard HTML
Office 365 Partial
  • Standard HTML
  • Blocks images by default
  • CSS issues
  • Anchor links and table of contents don't work
  • Images occasionally preview as the size of the original file saved in the Library, causing stretching or distortion - need to resize the image in the Library and re-insert it into the email
Outlook 97 Partial
  • No font or link colors
  • Issues with alignment
Outlook 98 and 2000 Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Doesn't fully support CSS
Outlook 98 and 2001 (Mac) No
  • Rich text format only
Outlook 2003 Partial
  • Blocks HTML images by default
Outlook 2007 and 2010 Partial
  • Doesn't support forms, Flash, or other plug-ins, CSS floats, CSS positioning, animated GIF's
  • Replaces bullet points with images in ordered lists
  • Inserts page breaks into lengthy emails that may cause gaps
  • Image borders aren't supported
  • Hi-def display greater than 1920px by 1080 px scales the text but doesn't scale the images
  • Image caption styles are overwritten by Outlook styles
  • Images larger than 1728 px in height are clipped
  • Adds extra spaces between paragraphs or double spaces text
  • Images can appear distorted based on computer display settings
Note: Microsoft has set up a tool to validate your HTML for Outlook 2007.
Outlook 2007 and 2010 (Mac) Partial
  • Doesn't support anchor links or table of contents links
  • Doesn't support animated GIF's
Outlook 2013 and 2016 Partial
  • Inserts page breaks into lengthy emails that may cause gaps
  • Adds empty bullet point if the last element in a block is a bullet - either don't end the block text with a bullet point or add <div style="display:none;"> </div> before the closing </ul> tag in the block's Code View
  • Hi-def display greater than 1920 px by 1080 px scales the text but doesn't scale the images
  • Images can appear based on computer display settings
  • Doesn't support animated GIF's
Outlook 2016 (Mac) Partial
  • Doesn't support anchor links or table of contents links
Outlook 365 Partial
  • Link color defaults to blue unless the preceding text is formatted with a color - need to wrap link in <span> tags and <td> and <div> tags must have different text color
  • Anchor links or table of contents links open a blank window instead of jumping down to anchored section of the email
  • Text is justified by default, even if left-aligned in the email
  • Image padding is stripped out
Outlook Web Access Partial
  • Standard HTML
  • Blocks images by default
  • Anchor links and table of contents links don't work
  • Images occasionally preview as the size of the original file saved in the Library, causing stretching or distortion - need to resize the image in the Library and re-insert it into the email
Outlook Express (PC and Mac) Yes
  • Standard HTML
Pegasus Mail 3.1 (Windows) Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • No link colors
Smartphones (Android, iPhone, etc...) Yes
  • Phone numbers may appear hyperlinked (click-to-call)
  • Date ranges may be added as an event on the phone's calendar with the physical address from the email's footer attached to it
Verizon Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Doesn't support anchor links or table of contents links
Yahoo! Yes
  • Standard HTML
  • Doesn't support anchor links or table of contents links in all browsers - clicking on them closes the email and returns the reader to their inbox
  • Clips long newsletters - must shorten email or link to a web page