Email Formats

[steveeyes]

I use text based emails when sending emails. I always notice when I get a reply to my email with my email still below their reply, sometimes it is not formatted the same before I sent it .

Here are some of the common things I notice.

SEND IT OUT WITH A SPACE BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

IT COMES BACK WITH NO SPACE

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

SEND IT OUT FORMATTED WITH EVEN LINES

aaaaaaaa bbbbbbbb cccccccc dddddddd

IT COMES BACK WITH A LINE BROKEN UP

aaaaaaa bbbbbbbb cccc
cccc dddddddd

It bugs me that it looks great when I create it and I even send myself a test email and all looks as expected (yes I send myself an email to check out the format), but it doesn't look the same when someone else receives it.

How are you to format a text email for all email accounts. It's tough to know how to format it when I send a copy to one of my hotmail accounts and it looks great, but when I get a reply with my email still at the bottom of the reply and it looks like it is out of whack.

Is there a sure fire way of formatting an email so it will always look the same no matter who receives it.

I searched the net, but when you search for "email format" you get all kinds of search results.

Cheers
and thanks for any input

[Dan Grossman]

What someone quotes in a reply doesn't tell you anything about how they received the mail. The second example you gave is just caused by the sender's e-mail client being set to wrap lines at a certain number of characters. You don't know if their *reading* settings are the same, nor can you control any recipient's reading settings.

Is there a sure fire way of formatting an email so it will always look the same no matter who receives it.

Send mails as PDF attachments. Realistically, the answer is no.

[c.t.c.]

The MailChimp Inbox Inspector shows you how your email will look when received in all the major email clients. It's aimed at HTML email, but since MailChimp also lets you send text emails, it may work for them as well. I've used MailChimp to send email newsletters, but I haven't tried the Inbox Inspector.