I need to send an HTML email to my existing clients that uses a table structure with some cells containing background images with overlaid text.
These images will not render correctly in Outlook 2007. Can anyone suggest a workaround or solution to this problem?
Regards
Danny
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use the full URL for the images...
if the background image is ="/images/image.jpg", then make it ="http://www.yourdomain.co
Thanks for your suggestions
The full url of the images is already being used. The reason that the images are not displaying is due to the fact that the rendering engine in Outlook 2007 will not recognise background images as a valid tag even with the full URL.
There is an article with more information here:
http://www.campaignmonitor
I am trying to find out if there is any known solution or workaround to this probllem
Regards
Danny
I got it to work.
I wrapped the body text in a DIV and gave the DIV tag an inline style.
Here's the PHP code.
<?PHP
error_reporting(E_ALL | 2048);
function sendMail($to, $subject, $body="", $title="", $from="", $cc="", $bcc="", $reply="") {
$mailer = new COM("Persits.MailSender") or die("Unable to instantiate aspemail");
$smtp = "mail.domain.com";
$login = "admin@domain.com";
$pwd = "xy7324klhew";
$body = "<DIV STYLE=\"background-image: url('link removed'); background-repeat: repeat; background-position: left top;\"><FONT face=Arial size=2>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
elit. Cras dolor. Sed sed neque. Duis eros justo, bibendum in, placerat eget,
ullamcorper vel, nibh. Praesent urna arcu, sagittis eget, semper laoreet, tempus
non, augue. In a pede. Vestibulum consequat eleifend sem. Duis tristique tortor
ultricies massa. Duis sapien eros, posuere sit amet, rhoncus non, venenatis
bibendum, tellus. Donec dui tortor, dignissim quis, eleifend eget, fermentum a,
massa. Maecenas vel enim vitae sapien condimentum eleifend. Duis hendrerit
luctus dui. Donec sem dui, posuere a, consectetuer eget, pretium aliquet,
turpis. Vestibulum posuere porta lacus. Sed convallis molestie purus. In hac
habitasse platea dictumst.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>";
$mailer->Host = $smtp;
$mailer->Username = $login;
$mailer->Password = $pwd;
$mailer->AddAddress($to);
if ($from=="") {
$mailer->From = "webmaster@domain.com";
$mailer->FromName = "My Company";
}else{
$mailer->From = $from;
}
if ($cc!="") {
$mailer->AddCC($cc);
}
$mailer->Subject = $subject;
$mailHead = "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\">\n";
$mailHead .= "<html>\n<head>\n <META http-equiv=Content-Type content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\">\n";
if ($title!="") {
$mailHead .= " <title>$title</title>";
}
$mailHead .= " </head>\n";
$mailBody = "<body>\n <div>\n";
$mailBody .= " $body\n";
$mailBody .= " </div>\n</body>\n</html>";
$mailer->Body = $mailBody;
$mailer->IsHTML = true;
$mailer->Send() or die("failed");
unset($mailer);
}
// usage
echo sendMail("person@domain.co
?>
Regards,
Rod
The image which was linked in the above example
now I'm confused....
If the CSS method does not work, how then does the inline style work? inline styling is nothing more than inline CSS:
Your Comment
kevp75:
well...apparently you are SOL.
What about trying out the CSS method? (dont' come back here and say it won't work, unless you actually try it out first please...)
Author:rdivilbissDate:04.1
Rank: Master
rdivilbiss:
I didn't work for me using CSS to set a background image via full URL.
>>now I'm confused....
>>If the CSS method does not work, how then does the inline style work? inline styling is nothing more than inline CSS:
Maybe the body tag can take an inline style. I didn't try that. I simply tried inline style on a division.
>>What about trying out the CSS method? (dont' come back here and say it won't work, unless you actually try it out first please...)
The asker did not post results, I made an example and tried it in an effort to anser the question.
>I didn't work for me using CSS to set a background image via full URL.
That was using embedded CSS for the body... not inline style.
Rod
Hi Rod
Many thanks for this suggestion. Unfortunately it does not work for me :(
I have used this code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtm
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="300" height="656" align="center" cellpadding="5">
<tr>
<td height="650">
<div STYLE="background-image: url('http://www.richmansof
This is my text and it appears in front of the background image.
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
The email displays without the background image in Outlook 2007
Any idea why it is work for you but not for me?
Regards
Danny
Note the image was cropped because my body text wasn't long enough to expand the division. Other than that, your image seems to work.
Just make sure you have enough text to make the division expand to reveal the whole image.
the image
I'm wondering if this is some sort of anti-spam setting in Outlook 2007.
In Outlook 2003 I had to manually tell it not to download images. In Outlook 2007 that may be enabled by default.
Frankly (not helpful to your question) I stopped receiving HTML email years ago, and still haven't changed that because of all the new zero day attacks over the last few years which primarily involved e-mail attachment vectors including images.
Sorry again about the 2003 -2007 confusion.
I loaded the following code into Word 2007 and it displays the background image:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body style="background-image:ur
<div>
<h1>Headingr</h1>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I tried it with the div and it didn't work.
Wow, I forgot I had this out there. Here is a great site that highlights what you can and cannot do with Outlook 2007.
http://www.campaignmonitor
It depends on how desperate you are to achieve this. One possible work around that I have investigated is not to us background images, but in fact normal images which - wait for it (cringe) - retrieve a dynamic image generated by asp.net http handlers.
In my situation i wanted to welcome a person by name, and tell them how long they had to go to a certain date in the future (+ some other welcome text etc). This information was dynamically addeded using GDI+ on the server.
I leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but it works and the email looks the way you want it to look - and in the end of the day the only bit thats slightly out of the ordinary is the use of GDI+ to effectively draw the text onto the image that you would have otherwise used as the background, everything else, including retrieving the image of the hard drive (which your server would have done anyway) is the same.
There is also one up side to this too. Because the text is effectively an image, you can anti-alias it.
Si
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: fuzzboxerPosted on 2007-04-16 at 08:04:57ID: 18918152
Outlook 2007 uses the HTML rendering engine from Word 2007 which means it barely has any support for CSS. My suggestion is to build your email in Word 2007 and use that code.