Creating HTML emails

[ChrisK]

Hi there,

I have been tasked with creating HTML email to do a newsletter and sending
this out using Outlook 2007. I have the HTML created in Sharepoint Designer
2007 but how do I "import" this into an Outlook 2007 HTML email message
cleanly?

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, April 03, 2009 4:05:07 PM, and on a whim,
ChrisK pounded out on the keyboard:

Hi there,

I have been tasked with creating HTML email to do a newsletter and sending
this out using Outlook 2007. I have the HTML created in Sharepoint Designer
2007 but how do I "import" this into an Outlook 2007 HTML email message
cleanly?

Hi Chris,

Depending on how SPD codes its CSS. I design newsletters for quite a
few clients and I have found that CSS stylesheets and layout get
horribly trashed by OL, especially after Word gets a hold of the code
and bloats it to over three times the original size.

SPD isn't really for doing what you want anyway. You could try a free
program called Nvu:
http://www.net2.com/nvu/

It produces clean code.

In OL, make sure OL is set to use HTML as its default message format.
Here are a couple ways to get the HTML into OL:

After creating the HTML file, open it in IE, click Edit, Select All,
then press Ctrl-C. Then open a new OL Compose window and press Ctrl-V.

In IE, browse to the HTML page that you saved as a file. Then, choose
File, Send, Page by Email.

Depending on the complexity of your newsletter, it could be a very
simple process or a nightmare.

Terry R.

 

[ChrisK]

Thanks Terry.

The corporate design HTML I have been given (and started to customize) looks
horrendous when stuck straight into OL from a HTML editor and so I'm leaning
towards the nightmare scenario... :-(

Would I be better off creating this straight in OL? The design is fairly
straightforward with a banner image, some contact details and an index down
the left side and some paragraphs of text and images in the body on the right
side...

CK

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, April 03, 2009 5:07:11 PM, and on a whim,
ChrisK pounded out on the keyboard:

Thanks Terry.

The corporate design HTML I have been given (and started to customize) looks
horrendous when stuck straight into OL from a HTML editor and so I'm leaning
towards the nightmare scenario... :-(

Would I be better off creating this straight in OL? The design is fairly
straightforward with a banner image, some contact details and an index down
the left side and some paragraphs of text and images in the body on the right
side...

CK

Hi Chris,

I thought it would most likely not look how you originally designed it.

I would highly suggest trying Nvu, and using the second suggestion using
IE and File, Send, Page by Email.

If you can compose it in OL (or Word since Word is the editor), that
might be your best bet. As long as your "banner image" is a single
graphic and not a combination of images using CSS to align them, you
should be okay. Otherwise I would suggest combining all images into a
single banner image.

Using HTML in OL for special font sizes and colored backgrounds is quite
a bit different than laying out a newsletter using lots of different
elements. If you're stuck with using OL, you probably should try to
work with what you've been given, unfortunately. And not try to make it
too complicated.

I hand code my HTML documents and OL never fails to butcher nice lean
code with a bloated mess that destroys the formatting. I use Mozilla
Thunderbird which handles CSS nicely, and has an HTML editor to paste in
or edit HTML code. A nice feature OL is sorely missing.



Terry R.