Another Email Text Format Question

[bcooney]

Just read thru many posts here that explain that emails created using Send Mail do not retain any formatting. However, I wasn't sure if the poster was using FM8 and the answers reflected the latest available tools.

My emails are generated using a calc text field, and have lost all carriage returns and text formatting. I really don't care about the formatting. It's the loss of carriage returns that results in a big runon email.

I'm hoping someone has solved this without a plugin. I've used email plugins and have been happy with them. But this is a commercial product that will be shipped as a runtime (therefore PDF is out) and we'd rather avoid bundling plug-ins.

[bcooney]

Just tried wrapping my text field in GetasCSS() and it restored all my carriage returns. Happy camper!

[bcooney]

Back again. Using GetasCSS() works for Thunderbird on my WinXP box, but not on Mac using Entourage or Mail (lots of html code results).

I've found the posts that suggest you substitute "return" with "%0A%0D" but that just results in %0A%0D all over the place. So, either I'm substituting incorrectly, or that's an old trick that no longer works.

I'm trying to send a text field that is full of carriage returns as the email body.

[Conartist]

I'm using double carriage returns inside of text quotes and it results in the one carriage return that I want in the resulting email. I'm using FM 8.5 and Outlook on a PC.

[bcooney]

I can't have a user enter double carriage returns inside of quotes. Are you saying that I should substitute for each single carriage return, two carriage returns?

I'm worried that this is email client specific and not platform specific. The reason that this is a huge problem for me, is this is for a runtime commericial app and I can't predict their email client. I can, of course, check the platform.

The latest tests I've done seem to indicate:

1. On Mac w/Mail, text sends fine with returns.

2. On Mac w/Eudora, text sends fine with returns.

3. On WinXP with Thunderbird, substitute creturns with "

" works.

4. On WinXP with Outlook 2002, text sends fine with returns, but each email receives prompt from Outlook warning that another app is trying to send email.

As you can see, Thunderbird acts differently than Outlook (both on WinXP) Yikes! I need to find a solution that works for everything. Perhaps there's a setting in Thunderbird that when checked, lets the returns stay. Any ideas?

If you'd like to help, dear readers, pls send yourself a text field that contains carriage returns using FM's Send Mail and let me know if it worked OK. Let me know which email client/platform you used. Thanks.

[bcooney]

Looks like there may be a bug in Thunderbird that is affecting text "pasted" in from FM. It's not recognizing carriage returns.

Some Thunderbird Email Trivia