Author:
Mike Adams
04/27/2012
Recently, I needed to send an HTML email to a list of graduating seniors here are UC Davis to let them know about some Adobe deals we had. How was I going to do this though? I researched Google and found several different options involving having to use Internet Explorer to “Send page by e-mail”. This was not what I wanted though. I wanted to send it through Outlook. So after even more digging, I finally found the solution and wanted to share it with everyone else. (Hopefully you don’t have to do as much digging as I did to find this page.) Read on after the break.
First, you need to create your e-mail and save it in an HTML format. In my case I named mine “adobe test.html”.
Open up Outlook 2010 and create a “New E-mail”.
Click on “Attach File”.
Find your .html file (in this case “adobe test.html”). Then, click on the drop down next to “Insert”. Click on that, then scroll down and click on “Insert as Text”.
Your .html file will then be placed into your e-mail as you were intending. Make sure to test out links, etc. before sending to recipients.
All you have to do after that is hit send. But again, make sure to test and tweak your work. Each e-mail provider (from Outlook to Hotmail) offers different interpretations of your HTML e-mail. Certain ones don’t care if you use an image map, but Outlook will not let you use it. Make sure you search around for the latest restrictions on HTML emails with various platforms. If anyone has better ways to accomplish this, please be sure to leave a comment at the bottom. Until next time…
thanks for the information on how to send a good mailing! love the post
thanks for this information! I am using Outlook 2010 to send the HTML file in the body of the email, but when I send it, the breaks appear between images and some images are missing when I use this approach. However, others in my office don’t have the same problem and your instructions are working just fine. It is important to send this html file from my computer to my clients. Are there any special settings in Outlook that might need to be enabled/disabled to make this work? thanks in advance for any information.
nice it’s working thank u
I copied your html code, just as a test, and did what you said for Outlook 2010, but it came back as the same source code, not a visual rendering of it. What did I do wrong?
It would be wonderful if it were this easy. When I do this – inserting my html file as text – it doesn’t pick up the images. Everything’s linked correctly; it all shows up in my browser window when I try opening the html file there. But in the Outlook message window, I’m getting text placement and hex-specified colors…but not even placeholders for my images.
I am sad
thanks for the information.one more question
suppose we have a html file and on it a submit button is there.
if user click on it ,can we send it the page as with same properties(same font and style) via outlook. i.e automatic
I got this to work beautifully; thanks for the article! I think I see what many of the folks above are missing: In Step 1 (“First create your e-mail and save it in an HTML format”) be sure you end up with: a) an HTML file, and b) a folder containing all of the images referenced by that HTML file. That way when you proceed to the other steps, the images are there. To demonstrate this, use Internet Explorer to browse to a fairly simple web page, then click “Tools” (the gear) > “File” > “Save as”, then change “Save as type” to “Webpage, complete (*.html)”. This creates the HTML file and the essential folder containing all of the images referenced by the HTML file. You may want to use a website creation tool (i.e. Front Page) to accomplish the HTML file and the folder of images.
This was just what I was looking for! A very simple and easy process. Thank you!
Thank you to all the good people who spend time to help others. Microsoft create the problems and offer no solutions. Now I have answers to sort Outlook I am smiling again and life is worth living once more.
Anyone accomplished inserting a Table with background image? Something like … style=”background-image:url(’roundedborder.png’);background-repeat:no-repeat” ? All my HTML holds nice in the new mail, apart from the table background. I guess this is too much I would wish for?
@Patrick – I do, in fact, successfully save my files as html. And my images are stored on internet-connected servers and referenced via absolute URLs. As I said, when I open the html file in my web browser it’s perfect. All images present and accounted for. But when I paste that same html file into my Outlook “new message” window as text….no images at all.
Thank you, so simple when you know how. And now I do
Thanks for your tutorial! It helped me look super smart to my boss.
Thank you very much.. it worked
This worked wonderfully till I got to the bottom of my email and the bottom portion was cut off and not included at all. it’s on the original html page I created but the email will only go so long in lenth of the page. What do I do to make the page longer so all of my content will show up?
Thank you very much!!!!!
Thanks
In Outlook 2003 and 2007, on a PC, you can simply put the saved html file onto your desktop, then click and drag it over into your Inbox in Outlook folder list, and it will automatically open as an HTML email with the content in the body. If it doesn’t, then from the Tools menu select Options > Select Send tab > Choose HTML in the Mail Sending Format.
You can also view the html file in a web browser, select all> copy> and paste into an Outlook message.
In Outlook 2010 you can’t do the drag n drop trick or the copy and paste one, you need to use the info at the top of the blog.
For your HTML file, you will need it to use “inline CSS” and get it made using tables-based layout and then run it through the easy inliner tool at http://beaker.mailchimp.com/inline-css
For current guidelines and tips on what will work in html emails, see
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/guidelines/
Hi, the html file i insert in my mail contains a form with some inputs suche as , etc… When I recieve the mail the inputs are not visible anymore…
It worked with Outlook 2003 very well, whithout doing anything …
Is there any option to read HTML forms, not the outlook ones because i send mails using a Java program.
* such as : select, input type=”submit”….