Random formatting differences between what I send and what is received

djmills32 · #1 11-16-2010, 08:58 PM

Hi,

I am having a strange problem. Sometime there is a significant difference in the formatting of my emails sent compared to what my recipient receives.

For example, I replied to a message. The person I replied to received my message text as sent (HTML format), but their name and email address after the word "From:" in the quoted message was 100.o pt whereas the same message in my Sent items is 10.0 pt. Below is an HTML except from what is in my Sent items:

Code:

<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Cristina Aldamiz-Echevarría [mailto:caldamizg@grupoacs.com] <br>

Whereas Cristina received this part as:

Code:

<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:100.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Cristina Aldamiz-Echevarría [mailto:caldamizg@grupoacs.com] <br>

Other emails I have sent have similar issues - but in different parts of the email. Most of my messages make it through without these issues. About 1 in 20 are having these issues.

Does anyone have any idea what is making these changes or how they are being made?

Thanks,

David.

SpiderTech · #2 11-18-2010, 07:53 PM

david,

The above HTML code is identical. both show the font size and family to be the same.

Please review.

djmills32 · #3 11-18-2010, 07:58 PM

Hi Spidertech,

Please look again. One has

style='font-size:10.0pt
and the other

style='font-size:100.0ptThanks,

David.

SpiderTech · #4 11-18-2010, 08:43 PM

David

You are correct.

Although you can change the style you compose a message such as HTML or rich and plain text, I'm unaware of a method to change the type of the from field. Even though you can alter some styling using the editor properties ( 2010) There are no visable option to change the font size of there from field.

1. What client is the recipient currently using?
2. Are you both on the same network?

Keep me posted.

djmills32 · #5 11-19-2010, 09:43 PM

The recipients (who all got the same enlarged from text) were using a wide range of mail programs including MS Office 2007.

Given that various programs all saw the large text in the from field, that would suggest that the only possible cause of the change was either the sending copy of MS Office or the SMTP host.

2 of the recipients were on the same network. Others were elsewhere.

SpiderTech · #6 11-21-2010, 06:27 AM

David,

It has been difficult in finding a solution to your issue or an exact similarity, however, through my internet travels i stumbled across this thread:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rextang/arch...5/5292516.aspx

Check to see if this resolves your issue.

djmills32 · #7 11-21-2010, 06:24 PM

Thanks for looking into it.

However I don't think that what you found applies in our case as it would change the appearance of the entire message whereas what we have is just some parts of the message being affected.

e.g. Here's a screen grab of what's in our "Sent items" folder:
(It is a corporate private message so I have blurred the images so that they are unreadable - you can clearly see the change in formatting though)

And here is a screen grab of what the person we sent it to sees:

For an entirely different message the effect was quite different. The message as received ended up with big gaps in it that weren't in the message as sent.

What was sent:

What was received:

Any other ideas?

djmills32 · #8 11-30-2010, 04:45 AM

The office that this occurs in has 2, as far as I can tell with this issue, identically set up computers.

One difference I have noticed is that when one of these computers sends an email, there are a lot of font directives in the HTML that the other computer doesn't use.

I sent myself a test email from each.

The first computer (that doesn't experience this issue) resulted in a message that had the same html content up to this line:

Code:

</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vli=
nk=3Dpurple><div class=3DWordSection1><p class=3DMsoNormal>Test message

The second had this:

Code:

</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=3DEN-US link=3Dblue vli=
nk=3Dpurple><div class=3DWordSection1><p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 f=
ace=3DCalibri><span style=3D'font-size:11.0pt'>Test message

What is causing this "<font size=...>" to be added.

I believe that the issue occurs in the code that splits the message on send.

i.e. What is sent (i.e. or at least what you see in a "View source" of the message in the sent items folder) is a long single line

Code:

</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Calibri><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Test message

Outlook then splits this as shown in the comparison above into mutli lines with the MIME encoding character sequences.

I believe that there is a flaw in the encoding when the number in a font size directive gets split into 2 lines. If I could figure out how to stop all these extra font directives then the problem will go away.

Anyone know how to do this?

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