By: CampaignMonitor

Finally getting atop an annoying email rendering bug gives geeks like us near-endless, t-shirt removing satisfaction. Especially when it’s plaguing our newsletters. In this instance, our adversary was 3px spacing to the left and right of tables with align="" applied to them. The stage was Outlook 2007 and 2010. While this has been a long-running issue, things really came to a head when I was coding our latest email newsletter, only to find that two text boxes nested in a table would not sit alongside each other, thanks to said gaps:

Using align="" to float tables alongside each other is starting to be used as an easy way to convert a regular 2 column email design to a ‘wrapped’ 1 column on mobile devices. We’ll cover how to do this in the blog shortly.

Anyway, after an agonizing hour or so of trying to close the gaps with padding andmargin, I scheduled the campaign and walked away in defeat, knowing all too well that our Outlook-using subscribers would see the awkward gaps. Yes, I’d coaxed the boxes to sit beside each other, but it just wasn’t perfect. And anyone who knows how I code email designs knows that not perfect is simply not good enough.

Time passed and things settled down. That’s until a customer contacted us on the forums about the same issue.

Profile:  After 13 years of email marketing, this website is my personal way of giving back to a noisy, fragmented industry driven by commoditized CPM rates. If you are a part of the email marketing industry or an email marketer at heart, I invite you to participate in this project and become a contributor/author to The Email Guide Blog. Website:  http://www.theemailguide.com Twitter:   http://www.twitter.com/theemailguide LinkedIn:   http://ca.linkedin.com/in/chiefemailofficer

Other post by this Author Boost Conversion and Deliverability with 3 Email Marketing Rules by Jeff Ginsberg @Dad_FTW MailerMailer - How to Choose an Email Color Scheme HubSpot - How Opting People OUT Can Actually Improve Your Email Marketing