Thread

1. Is it possible to preview an email sent via the communication module in some way, other than sending myself the email first?

2. Is there some limit to how many times I can send myself an email via the communicate module? I was trying to develop a template, and the last six or seven times I’ve sent myself the email to my corporate and gmail address, the email has only shown up in my gmail inbox. The messages are nowhere to be found in my Outlook.

3. It seems as though emails sent via the communicate module render differently in Outlook than in Gmail. Is it possible to standardize the look and feel of the emails?

1. Is it possible to preview an email sent via the communication module in some way, other than sending myself the email first?

No, you can’t view emails sent via the communicate module. What you could do is to create a standalone template with the mail in it. That way you could see what it looked like before copying and pasting the code from the template.

2. Is there some limit to how many times I can send myself an email via the communicate module? I was trying to develop a template, and the last six or seven times I’ve sent myself the email to my corporate and gmail address, the email has only shown up in my gmail inbox. The messages are nowhere to be found in my Outlook.

There isn’t a limit, I know I’ve tested at least that many times. If your mail isn’t found in Outlook, look for some sort of spam filter occurring.

3. It seems as though emails sent via the communicate module render differently in Outlook than in Gmail. Is it possible to standardize the look and feel of the emails?

Realistically, I don’t bother with html formatted email. I do text only. That’s one method of standardization. Or if you have to code in HTML, do it for GMail.

I checked my junk email folder and the messages aren’t there. I’ve tried re-starting my computer, logging in and out of the control panel, but for some reason, the email is not getting through. The communicate module does say that the email was sent.

mikegibb, have you ever been able to send email to this Outlook account? Or is this something new? You mentioned that your GMail account was getting the mail, which shows that EE is sending..

Have you set up any rules in Outlook that could be deleting the mail?

If you use your Gmail information in the Your Name and Your Email when sending to your Outlook account, does that work?

Sending to my Outlook account worked a few times, but then it inexplicably stopped. I have tried using the Outlook account email and the Gmail email as the Reply-To Address, but neither have gotten through to the Outlook account. I tried a couple of different email accounts here in the office and nobody got the email.

I understand that the email is being sent, but my concern is: If Outlook is blocking receipt of the email to my account, what other accounts are being blocked? And how do I fix it?

On another note on the same topic, can I include this unsubscribe code

To remove your email from this mailing list, click here:
{if html_email}<a href="http://{unsubscribe_url}">{unsubscribe_url}</a>{/if}
{if plain_email}{unsubscribe_url}{/if}

in the HTML email sent via the communicate module? Or do I have to copy and paste the HTML email code in the Mailing List template?

I understand that the email is being sent, but my concern is: If Outlook is blocking receipt of the email to my account, what other accounts are being blocked? And how do I fix it?

You’d be better off contacting your IT person on white listing your email address. The fact that it worked, and then didn’t points to some sort of filtering on your email accounts.

The unsubscribe code is just for the mailing lists. It won’t do any good for regular HTML mails sent out via Communicate.

Make sense?

Thanks. Two questions—

1. Is there any unsubscribe code that can be added to the communicate module?

2. Does anyone know why emails are rendering differently in Gmail than in Outlook? Specifically, I have two tables in the email that are not being spaced or padded at all in Gmail, but look fine in Outlook.

Here is a sample of the code:

<table width="200" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="10" align="left">
<tr valign="top">
<td>

<a href="http://www.notimportant.com">http://www.notimportant.com/filename.gif</a>

</td>
</tr><tr>
<td>

<a href="http://www.notimportant.com">http://www.notimportant.com/filename.gif</a>

</td>
</tr>

Hm- there isn’t a way to unsubscribe from the communicate module per se- but in user settings, users can opt out of accepting emails- from either members or administrators.  I don’t know that I’d want to handle it that way, though.  Might be better to automatically assign all members to a mailing list- and let them opt out of that.

Different email clients handle html differently.  HTML email is a bit unreliable in that regard.  Is it still readable?  If so, I don’t know how much time you want to put into delving into the differences in how the various clients handle it.

The email is still readable, but there is no space in between the two images in Gmail, but there is space in Outlook. Oh well, I guess we’ll just chalk it up to the idiosyncracies of the internet.

On the unsubscribe front, would I just assign the members to the mailing list? And they can unsubscribe from that?

That is how I would personally do it.  I’d make a ‘default’ mailing list- and all members go on it by, well, default.  To handle that- I’d add a hidden field to the registration page- along the lines of this discussion.  The register?  They’re signed up.

To get folks who are already a member on there- I’d probably do a query to get their email addy’s:
[code}
{exp:query sql="SELECT email as mail FROM exp_members"}
{mail}

{/exp:query}
</code></pre>
That gives you a list of all member emails- might want to not include banned or something- anyway, it’s a query, you can pull from only certain member groups if you like.

Paste that in the textarea for the default list- and presto.  All current members are in the ‘default’ mailing list, any new members should be automatically added.  And they can then unsubscribe as desired.

Note- this is just how I’d like to do it.  Because there might be an emergency where you send out ‘the domain name is changing’ or something where you really do want to reach everyone.  But for most site updates- if they unsubscribe, they wouldn’t get that.

So really- personal preference on that one.  But overall- make sense?