When Outlook 2007 ignores css, how to specify font-size?

outlook html-email outlook-2007

13,333

Solution 1

I had a similar problem, but I only have Office 2010, so I can't verify that this would work for 2007. In case it helps, I've shared the basic structure of my HTML for Outlook messages below. The key differences I see from the original question are the style type "text/css" and the enclosing comment tags around the styles. Note that other elements, like td, th, table, etc., can be styled in this block as well.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>My Title</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--

body { font-size: 10pt font-family: sans-serif; }

-->
</style>
</head>
<body>
blah, blah
</body>
</html>

Solution 2

Times isn't a font in Windows (I believe that is the Mac name for Times New Roman).

Courtesy of cssfontstack, Try something like this:

font-family: TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif;

Beyond this try using the quotation marks fallback in the example above to see if that makes a difference. Also, apply your css styles to a <font> tag or a <td> directly. Div's are not really recommended for html email, so I'd avoid them wherever possible. I use font tags almost exclusively to style text and they always seem to come through for me.

13,333

Author by

Rob N

Software developer

Updated on August 22, 2022

Comments

Rob N over 1 year
I have two Windows computers, both with Outlook 2007. I send both an HTML email with stuff like:
```
<div style='font-family:Times New Roman,Serif;font-size:11pt'> ...
```
I need it to be Times New Roman, 11pt font. In one Outlook it shows up correctly as Times 11pt, in the other, Arial 12pt. I can get the second one to display Times by using surrounding content with a tag like:
```
<font face='Times New Roman' size='3'>...
```
But the size is mapped to 12pt, and size=2 is 10pt. I see no way yet to specify the size in px or pt. This tag is disturbing because we're in the year 2013.

I understand that Outlook HTML email rendering is a disaster because it defers to Word instead of IE for rendering. But why the difference? And can I do something to get the second copy of Outlook to act like the first one? Or is there some other way to tell it: "11pt".

Here is my most recent attempt at the HTML sent to Exchange...
```
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"   
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <style>
      body, div, p, table, td {
         font-family:TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Serif;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body style='font-family:TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Serif;font-size:11pt;'>
   <font style="font-family: TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14px; color: #000000;">
    <p>Blah blah.
    </p>
   </font>
 </body></html>
```
Rob N almost 11 years

Ack. You're right, but my code here was not a copy of the real code. There I did use Times New Roman. I'll update the question.
John almost 11 years

Now that we cleared that up, I added more to my answer - see above.
Rob N almost 11 years

My issue now is the size. <font face='Times New Roman' ...> works. But an attribute like style='font-size:11pt' on the font tag is ignored. Mmm... maybe I can try size='2.5' to get 11pt. Will post again if that works.
John almost 11 years

Try something like this format, but with the quotes: <font style="font-family: TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14px; color: #000000;">Here is your styled text</font>
Rob N almost 11 years

Tried it. It rendered at Arial 12pt. Grr. Updated question with full HTML example.
PKHunter over 10 years

Hi. Did you ever get the answer to this question? It's impractical to add <font> tags to every..single...line...of....text. Surely there's a better way to do this?
Rob N over 10 years

I think we got it to behave well enough with a font tag around the entire body, or large chunks of it. So you don't need one every line, but still... ugly. I don't think we ever got exactly 11pt.
James Cushing about 9 years

Not sure why MS feels the need to go against the standard all the time, but yes - commenting out the styles means Outlook 2010 will still render them. What is this, I don't even...