Outlook 2007 Html table td elements

Question

I try to make newsletter compatible with Outlook 2007, but Outlook rendering engine isn't very logical. Following code is not making borders as width of 1 pixel like in Firefox and other rendering engines, but it adds some extra space between some of these td-elements. Is there a workaround for this issue ?

<table>
<tr>

<td width="0" style="border-left: 1px solid #cdcdcd; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-left: 1px solid #c1c1c1; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-left: 1px solid #adadad; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-left: 1px solid #949494; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>

<td width="100%" bgcolor="white">
content here
</td>

<td width="0" style="border-right: 1px solid #949494; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-right: 1px solid #adadad; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-right: 1px solid #c1c1c1; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>
<td width="0" style="border-right: 1px solid #cdcdcd; border-bottom: 0px none; border-top: 0px none; margin: 0;" ></td>

</tr>
</table>

Answer 1

I've had this problem before. To make it display correctly in Outlook, you have to have it like:

<td style="border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;"> 

to make the borders show up.

It's a bit weird, but that's Microsoft for you.

Answer 2

<table cellspacing = "0"> will solve your problem if I understand it correctly

Answer 3

have you tried setting "border-collapse: collapse" on the table?

A very usefull guide to show which CSS properties are supported in Outlook 07/03: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2533/a-guide-to-css-support-in-emai-2/#pc

Answer 4

You could try to do your newsletter with Word 2007, saving it as HTML and then tweaking it (triming unnecesary things) for the rest of the email clients.

Outlook (<2007) by default uses Trident, IE's engine for incoming mail, and Word HTML rendering engine for outgoing mail... Until Office 2007, and people hate it.

Now, it uses Word 2007's rendering, wich is rather lacking. On microsoft's page you can see the attributes you can use.

Answer 5

I just set border-collapse:"collapse", cellspacing="0", cellpadding = "0" with my Outlook 2007 and it helped.