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Send html emails using outlook

Some people often ask me how to send emails with html (and associated images) with outlook.  There is a simple way to achieve this, but first requires that you have created a html page and uploaded it to a web server, with your images set with absolute paths.
To Send the email, you need to open it using outlook instead of a web browser:

1. Open Outlook
2. Make sure the ‘Web’ toolbar is visible, if it isn’t, right click anywhere on the main toolbar, and select ‘Web’, this should make a small toolbar appear with a small address bar on it, it might have the text ‘outlook:Inbox’ in it already.
3. Change this text to url of the html email you wish to send out, now the mailshot should appear in the panel below the toolbar (where emails might normally appear).
4. Go to the ‘Actions’ menu, you’ll see a ‘Send web page by email’ option at the bottom, this will create a new email with the mailshot as the main body content, all that’s left to do is to BCC all the recipients.

If you are having problems, it’s most likely that your outlook settings need changed to view email messages as html, rather than plain text:

1. go to tools > options > mail format
2. Compose in this message format: select HTML
3. UNCHECK Use Microsoft Word to edit email messages
4. UNCHECK Use Microsoft Word to read Rich Text email messages

Hopefully by now, you’ll be able to see the email in all it’s glory, all you have to do now is send it by BCC’ing everyone!

Let me know how you get on!

Tags: bcc, html emails, outlook, rich text, word