HTML E-Mail Looks Different in Outlook 2007There's something very different about HTML email in Outlook 2007. One of the changes Microsoft made was to make Word 2007 the only email editor for Outlook 2007. This has simplified life in some ways, but caused some problems as well. One of the biggest problems with this change is that Outlook 2007 doesn't display HTML email messages nearly as well as Outlook 2003 did. It's not a disaster, but it is definitely noticeable and will cause the people who create HTML email messages some headaches. Microsoft has published
articles
that describe all the limitations in the way Word 2007 (and therefore Outlook 2007) supports web publishing standards. Read it if you want, but it is easy to see that there are problems without doing so. For example: here's a piece of an HTML message from AllPosters.com as it appears in Outlook 2003: 
And here's the same piece of the exact same message displayed by Outlook 2007: 
As you can see, the positioning of the two parts of the image is incorrect in Outlook 2007. Simple HTML email messages seem to come through ok, but any that rely on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a standard tool for formatting HTML messages, will apparently be messed up. According to the articles Microsoft posted, Word 2007 doesn't support dozens of the properties that are part of the current CSS standard. What Does this Mean to Me?At one level, this means nothing to you, because there is nothing you can do about it, short of sticking with Outlook 2003.At another level, it means that you can expect to see weirdness in the HTML email messages you receive once you start using Outlook 2007. Since Outlook has the vast majority of the market for corporate e-mail programs, eventually people will redesign their HTML messages to eliminate all the features that Outlook no longer supports and messages should look ok again. But for some time to come, there will be weirdness. At yet another level, if you create HTML email messages using some tool other than Outlook 2007, particularly messages that use CSS for formatting and layout, they may appear different than you expect when Outlook 2007 users view them. So be prepared to test them in Outlook, and expect to have to do some redesign. From here you can:
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