Why doesn't my HTML message display correctly in Outlook?

Emails not displaying properly in Outlook? You're not alone.

Some versions of Microsoft Outlook, most notoriously 2007, 2010, and 2013, use Microsoft Word to render HTML email, rather than a web browser or other program which is compatible with current web standards.

What does this mean?

Basically, it means that people viewing email in Outlook may not be able to see your beautifully designed templates properly. Parts of these templates, including background images, bulleted lists, and many positioning elements, may not appear at all, or may be broken when viewed in these versions of Outlook.

What To Do About It

On the extreme end, you can send plain text email. Even without going that far, you can send HTML email, as long as you keep your formatting simple: as a rule, don't use any CSS elements (if you're not sure what those are, either ask your web designer or simply don't worry about it).

If you keep things simple, Outlook users shouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

Alternately, you can simply accept that Outlook users may have trouble, and provide them with a link to view your email as a web page. This allows you to use HTML email templates and other advanced styling features, while still giving users of mail clients that don't support those features an option to see your messages as they were meant to be seen.

What if I have issues designing my messages?

AWeber offers hundreds of templates you’re welcome to use! If you would ever find yourself wanting to modify an existing template or would like a custom template built for you to reflect your branding, our Template Team would be happy to modify existing templates or design a custom template for you!