Microsoft Word and Outlook 2007 - Bad Mix for Email
March 20, 2008 – 10:29 amWe just had a customer create her email content in Microsoft Word. Then, she pasted from Word into her HTML email, and sent a test to herself. That’s normally when most people learn how bad Microsoft Word is for making emails (it adds a whole bunch of code that breaks your email design). But this user never caught that, because she checked her test email in Microsoft’s Outlook 2007 (which uses Microsoft Word to render HTML email). So to her, everything looked just fine. So she sent the broken email to her entire list. Ouch.
In our experience, Microsoft Outlook has always been a very “forgiving” email app. Almost anything will work in Outlook, including videos in some cases. So if you want to do some serious email campaign testing, download a few other email programs. Mozilla Thunderbird is a good start. Of course, if you don’t have the time or desire to download a bunch of email programs and sending lots of test campaigns to each one, you can always use our built-in Inbox Inspector.
12 Responses to “Microsoft Word and Outlook 2007 - Bad Mix for Email”
I’ve made that exact same mistake! Thanks to your customer service I got that cleaned up. Now I know how to remove all of that tagging with Mac’s text edit. Another “save” for the customer service team!
By adam mclane on Mar 20, 2008
Outlook sometimes allows Video email? I’ll have to look into that. It might be good for lists where I know everybody has Outlook.
By ohilldo on Mar 24, 2008
Yeah, Outlook 2000 and 2003 surprisingly allowed video in our testing (so long as your anti-v software didn’t block it). I’m not so sure about Outlook 2007. Would have to boot up the old test machine to verify it, but to be honest, so few apps support video, it’s not worth the time IMHO.
By Ben on Mar 24, 2008
Since we do generate the newsletter in Word, we’ve found that saving it into a notepad type program as a text file seems to clear out the unnecessary Microsoft-infused code. Though the differences in how the emails appear between programs and platforms remains a bit of a mystery.
By Melanie on Mar 25, 2008
When I was first learning to use Mail Chimp, I did the exact same thing but I clicked on the source code and noticed all of the crazy gobbly gook that Microsoft Word added when cutting and pasting.
My trick now is to compose in word, copy and paste to Notepad, then copy and past into the Mail Chimp HTML Editor. Notepad deletes all the gobbly gook.
Then I go through and format using the Mail Chimp controls. Works for me and allows me to create content without having to send unneccessary test mails.
Thanks MailChimp!!!
By Corey on Mar 27, 2008
Thanks Melanie and Corey. I do the same thing if I’m pasting from Word. Basically go through Notepad.
Here’s another trick I’ve learned:
If I’m pasting something from a web page (like the title of one my blog posts) into any WYSIWYG (MailChimp, Wordpress, etc), I’ve found that gets all gobbledy-gooked with formatting and hyperlinks as well. And I really don’t want to open up NotePad just to strip formatting from one little title.
So what I do is I copy the blog title, then I go up to the built-in Google search box in my browser (Mozilla Firefox or Safari) and paste it there. It actually strips the gobbledy-gook for you. Then I copy that, and paste into the WYSIWYG.
It’s cheap, it’s lazy, but it works. So long as you don’t have line breaks, you can actually paste a lot of content into that search box!
By Ben on Mar 27, 2008
As if Outlook using Internet Explorer to render HTML wasn’t bad enough, now it uses a clunky word processor.
Excuse me while I go bake a cake with this fridge…
By Dan on Mar 28, 2008
Something you might also want to mention is that if you’re creating your HTML email in a program like Dreamweaver and then pasting the source code into mailchimp, some of the attributes we took for granted like the background-image property no longer work in Outlook 2007 and depending on why you used the attribute, your email could wind up looking a whole lot different than what you had originally intended. (Missing images, bad line spacing, gaps between cells in tables, etc)
By Mike on Apr 4, 2008
god, I remember when I first started playing around with html newsletters, using the MS office suite (publisher messes with code as well!) - what a nightmare! I absolutely thought it was something I was doing~ GoLive / Dreamweaver were like a blessing from above when I finally rolled up my sleves and began learning them! haven’t looked back!
By Jon on Apr 16, 2008
And if that wasn’t enuff…. now we are finding that Outlook 2007 is messing with our title line spacing if we have more than one line. My copywriter is getting tired of me asking him to “be brief”. Nice of Microsoft to add an ice maker to that fridge you are baking your cake in, eh Dan?
By Deb on Apr 24, 2008
Ben, great tip about the Google search box! Sometimes it’s just a line or two I need to strip from Word, and it’s a pain to open Notepad for that.
I get content from a customer for a newsletter in Word, then have to re-do all the formatting in GoLive. I NEVER copy directly from Word. What a nightmare.
By Sami on May 2, 2008
got another one that Mac users may find very helpful.
I have a widget called “word counter” that counts all the words I paste into it. The beauty is, it strips the gob, and is a multi-line widget so Ben’s idea of the search box now works with whole paragraphs!
Here is a link: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/calculate_convert/wordcounterwidget.html
By glenn on May 7, 2008