Why won't outlook send this html email?

Factual Questions
1

I’m very unfamiliar with html. My company is sending out a christmas card to out contacts, and here is the code: (url and image source have been replaced with straight dope to protect the anonymous)

<head>

<style type=“text/css”>
a img {
border: none;
}

</style>
</head>

<body>
<a href=“http://www.straightdope.com”><img src=“http://www.straightdope.com/images/art/2009/dope_091211_hemp.gif” width=“747” height=“880” alt="Happy Holidays! " /></a>
</body>

When I send this from my hotmail account, in html editor mode, it works great. No problem. But this needs to be sent from a company email address, through outlook. I look up how to send an html email in outlook, and it seems easy- click options, and choose html. simple enough. but when I paste that exact same code, and send it- all it generates is an email containing that code text. I’ve tried from different computers, always make sure its in html mode, and its always the same. Why would this exact code work from hotmail, but not outlook?:confused:

2

I think you need to use the tools within Outlook to compose the email, as there is no HTML Editor mode.

You need to paste in the picture, right-click it to set the border property, highlight it to add a link, etc. Just like you would in Word.

3

thanks- is there not a way to reference a hosted image using outlook, so we don’t actually have to send the image?

4

I am working with a graphics guy at my company to standardize an HTML email signature that can be sent from Outlook. We figured out how to do it, but I have no idea if you can compose an email from scratch that way. There is a way to view HTML code for an incoming email but I have tried and never found a way to compose code for an outgoing message.

BTW do you realize that what you are trying to do is what is called “bandwidth stealing”? Every email will trigger a load from the web site (well, most clients now don’t automatically load images, but still). It’s considered bad manners (at best) to include an image on a web site (or an email) that is hosted on another site without their permission.

5

I have done this in the past, many times.

If you want your HTML email to appear exactly as you created, you first need to save that HTML to your hard drive. Then use Outlook Express to use that file as new “Stationery” (don’t have OE on this computer so you need to look up precisely how to do it in the help files).

Then make a new email using that piece of “Stationery” - and bada bing, your composed email is there as you wanted it to look, and ready to send.

(CookingWithGas, if it’s a corporate thing, I’d imagine the images are hosted on the company’s own website. It’s not stealing if you already own it.)

6

Absolutely. I read the OP a little too quickly and didn’t realize it was a fake example.

7

I have never heard it called that. Usually I hear it called hotlinking, but wiki does mention it as a (apparently rare) synonym.

The thing that I have problems with is that the most usual way of dealing with it is even worse: copying it and hosting it somewhere else. I have never heard of someone suing for hotlinking, but we all have for filesharing.

8

Thanks!
And yeah, the image is hosted on our company server, didn’t want to name them here, but wanted to have a proxy that technically works for the example