css padding is not working in outlook
I have following html in email template.
I am getting different view in MS Outlook and in gmail for the same.
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#7d9aaa" style="color: #fff; font-size:15px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 12px 2px 12px 0px; ">
<span style="font-weight: bold;padding-right:150px;padding-left: 35px;">Order Confirmation </span>
<span style="font-weight: bold;width:400px;"> Your Confirmation number is {{var order.increment_id}} </span></td>
</tr>
How to fix this?
Unfortunately, when it comes to EDMs (Electronic Direct Mail), Outlook is your worst enemy. Some versions don't respect padding when a cell's content dictates the cell dimensions.
The approach that'll give you the most consistent result across mail clients is to use empty table cells as padding (I know, the horror), but remember to fill those tables with a blank image of the desired dimensions because, you guessed it, some versions of Outlook don't respect height/width declarations of empty cells.
Aren't EDMs fun? (No. They are not.)
Avoid paddings and margins in newsletters, some email clients will ignore this properties.
You can use empty tr and td as was suggested (but this will result in a lot of html), or you can use borders with the same border color as the background of the email. so, instead of padding-top: 40px you can use border-top: 40px solid #ffffff (assuming that the background color of the email is #ffffff)
I've tested this solution in gmail (and gmail for business), yahoo mail, outlook web, outlook desktop, thunderbird, apple mail and more. As far as I can tell, border property is pretty safe to use everywhere.
Example:
<!-- With paddings: WON'T WORK IN ALL EMAIL CLIENTS! -->
<table>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px">
<!-- Content goes here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- Same result with borders and same border color of the background -->
<table>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid 10px #ffffff">
<!-- Content goes here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- Same result using empty td/tr. (A lot more html than borders, get messy on large emails) -->
<table>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" height="10" style="height: 10px; line-height: 1px"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="10" style="width: 10px; line-height: 1px"> </td>
<td><!--Content goes here--></td>
<td width="10" style="width: 10px; line-height: 1px"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" height="10" style="height: 10px; line-height: 1px"> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- With tr/td every property is needed. height must be setted both as attribute and style, same with width, line-height must be setted JIC default value is greater than actual height and without the some email clients won't render the column because is empty. You can remove the colspan and still will work, but is annoying when inspecting the element in browser not to see a perfect square table -->
In addition, here is an excelent guide to make responsive newsletters without mediaqueries. The emails really works everywhere:
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-future-proof-responsive-email-without-media-queries--cms-23919
And always remember to make styles inline:
https://inliner.cm/
To test emails, here is a good resource:
https://putsmail.com/
Finally, for doubts about css support in email clients you can go here:
https://templates.mailchimp.com/resources/email-client-css-support/
or here:
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
I changed to following and it worked for me
<tr>
<td bgcolor="#7d9aaa" style="color: #fff; font-size:15px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding: 12px 2px 12px 0px; ">
<table style="width:620px; border:0; text-align:center;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<td style="font-weight: bold;padding-right:160px;color: #fff">Order Confirmation </td>
<td style="font-weight: bold;width:260px;color: #fff">Your Confirmation number is {{var order.increment_id}} </td>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
Update based on Bsalex request what has actually changed. I replaced span tag
<span style="font-weight: bold;padding-right:150px;padding-left: 35px;">Order Confirmation </span>
<span style="font-weight: bold;width:400px;"> Your Confirmation number is {{var order.increment_id}} </span>
with table and td tags as following
<table style="width:620px; border:0; text-align:center;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<td style="font-weight: bold;padding-right:160px;color: #fff">Order Confirmation </td>
<td style="font-weight: bold;width:260px;color: #fff">Your Confirmation number is {{var order.increment_id}} </td>
</table>
To create HTML in email template that is emailer/newsletter, padding/margin is not supporting on email clients. You can take 1x1 size of blank gif image and use it.
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" style="background-color:#7d9aaa;">
<table width="640" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" colspan="5"><img style="display:block;" src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="10" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top"><img style="display:block;" src="images/spacer.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" /></td>
<td align="right" valign="top"><font face="arial" color="#ffffff" style="font-size:14px;"><a href="#" style="color:#ffffff; text-decoration:none; cursor:pointer;" target="_blank">Order Confirmation</a></font></td>
<td align="left" valign="top" width="200"><img style="display:block;" src="images/spacer.gif" width="200" height="1" alt="" /></td>
<td align="left" valign="top"><font face="arial" color="#ffffff" style="font-size:14px;">Your Confirmation Number is 260556</font></td>
<td align="left" valign="top"><img style="display:block;" src="images/spacer.gif" width="20" height="1" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" colspan="5"><img style="display:block;" src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="10" alt="" /></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>