sending email as HTML - Tech Support Forums

rh71 · August 12th, 2002, 06:12 PM

From Hotmail, I can write HTML code as the email text and the recipient would receive it rendered (not as code) complete with pictures in their Outlook client. From Lotus Notes and from the recipient's own Outlook client, when they write the HTML code and send it to themselves, they see the code only.

How do we make it so that their Outlook client always see the code rendered and never see the code? Is it a setting on the recipient's client? The Exchange server on their end? Or does it depend on the person sending it? Again, they sent the code to themself and they saw code only.

I always thought it's determined by the recipient's client and whether it can accept HTML or not.

Jeordiewhite · August 12th, 2002, 06:15 PM

Try rendering the code in a program like such as ms word, or any such program, then copy what show's up in word the send it. Take care and good luck.

Jeordiewhite · August 12th, 2002, 06:18 PM

or do you mean you can only write text. an hope it will come through on the other side as the html.
Maybe add a little attachment on the bottom and tell the to put it into word.

rh71 · August 12th, 2002, 06:50 PM

I basically want it to come out to the recipient looking like a webpage. I'm writing the HTML on my end when I send it. Showed up fine in recipient's Outlook client when I coded it through Hotmail's compose mode, but not in Outlook or Lotus Notes' compose modes.

Sending blah.html as an attachment to email does not render it either... it only allows a download of the .html file.

alligator_al · August 12th, 2002, 06:52 PM

Check to see if under 'Tools > Options > Mail Format' that the 'message format' option is not set to plain text.

If it is, then any text you paste into the outlook window will get sent as 'text' and appear as such on receipt (whatever the recipient's settings). You need to change the option to 'HTML'.

If this wasn't the case, then any html markup sent in an email would automatically render.

rh71 · August 12th, 2002, 07:00 PM

The recipient's Outlook client was set to HTML and she sent an email to herself written with html code. It came back as HTML code, not rendered.

But are you saying that the way it is rendered (text vs. rendered HTML) depends on BOTH the Outlook client settings and how it was sent? Both should be set to HTML ? Strange it hasn't worked for us.

alligator_al · August 12th, 2002, 07:23 PM

I still think it must be a 'send' setting that is causing this. It seems that there is no easy way to disable the receipt of correctly-formatted html-mail in Outlook (see this explanation of how to do this with VBA)

If it isn't something under the 'Mail format' options then I'm stumped!

howste · August 12th, 2002, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rh71
The recipient's Outlook client was set to HTML and she sent an email to herself written with html code. It came back as HTML code, not rendered.

Did she paste the HTML code into Outlook? If that's what she did it would still look like code, because Outlook would format it to display it as text. For example it will use "& lt" instead of "<" so that you can read the code in the email.

For example, if you paste the following HTML into Outlook:

Code:

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.100" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY><DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<P><FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size=2>The recipient's
Outlook client was set to HTML and she sent an email to herself
written with html code. It came back as HTML code, not rendered. <BR><HR>
But are you saying that the way it is rendered (text vs. rendered
HTML) depends on BOTH the Outlook client settings and how it
was sent? Both should be set to HTML ? Strange it hasn't worked for us. <HR></FONT>
<P></P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>

It would generate the following code:

Code:

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE></TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.100" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY><FONT face=Arial size=2>&lt;HTML&gt;&lt;HEAD&gt;&lt;TITLE&gt;
&lt;/TITLE&gt;<BR>&lt;META 
http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"&gt;<BR>&lt;META 
content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.100" 
name=GENERATOR&gt;&lt;/HEAD&gt;<BR>&lt;BODY&gt;&lt;DIV&gt;&lt;FONT face=Arial 
size=2&gt;<BR>&lt;P&gt;&lt;FONT face="verdana, arial, helvetica" size=2&gt;The recipient's
Outlook client <BR>was set
to HTML and she sent an email to herself written with html code.
It came <BR>back as HTML code, not rendered.
&lt;BR&gt;<BR>&lt;HR&gt;<BR>But are you saying that the way it
is rendered (text vs. rendered HTML) depends <BR>on BOTH the
Outlook client settings and how it was sent? Both should be set
to <BR>HTML ? Strange it hasn't worked for us. 
<BR>&lt;HR&gt;<BR>&lt;/FONT&gt;<BR>&lt;P&gt;&lt;/P&gt;&lt;/FONT
&gt;&lt;/DIV&gt;&lt;/BODY&gt;&lt;/HTML&gt;<BR></FONT>
</BODY></HTML>

Does that make sense? It really is sending HTML code, just not what you wanted...

strangerstill · August 12th, 2002, 08:14 PM

It's probably to do with MIME types... if you look at the entire source of a message that is both HTML and plaintext, you see that it comes in two chunks - the html is listed as text/html to tell the mail client to read it as formatted html. Just typing in html will leave it as text so the mail client won't know that it is html.

rh71 · August 12th, 2002, 08:24 PM

So I'm trying to understand - what would I need to modify to get the MIME type set at text/html? At least to show up as HTML and not the code.