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Subject:HTML newsletters in Outlook, take II From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:02:44 -0400
A couple days ago, I asked for suggestions on how to create a newsletter in
Word 97, then transform it into an HTML-formatted message in Outlook 2000
(perhaps via Dreamweaver). The Word function File-->Send to-->Mail recipient
loses all HTML formatting, so that won't work. I received several useful
responses that come close to succeeding, which I've summarized below. None
of them works quite the way we want, but this at least serves as a starting
point for further explorations. More comments welcome, and if I crack any of
these problems, I'll post a revised summary.
Creating an HTML newsletter
-------------------------------
There are three main ways to get an HTML document into Outlook so it can be
sent as HTML-formatted e-mail.
Note: These options don't embed images in the e-mail. The image tags remain
linked to files on a server (presumably our Web site); I've been advised not
to embed them in such a way that they are "served" by Exchange Server
because of the burden this imposes on the software.
Directly from within Outlook
-------------------------------
Note: For this procedure to work, Outlook must be configured (at least
temporarily) to use HTML by default. Open the Tools menu, select Options,
and click the Mail format tab. In the first field ("send in this message
format"), select HTML.
1. With Outlook's Inbox showing, display the Web toolbar: click on any
existing toolbar with the righthand mouse button, and select "Web".
2. In the unlabeled field at the right of the Web toolbar, enter the file's
URL. (This won't open a file on your local hard disk in Outlook; instead, it
launches Internet Explorer.)
3. Open the Actions menu and select "Send Web Page by E-mail".
Inserting files into a new message
-------------------------------
1. Open a new message (Control-N).
2. Set its format to HTML: open the Format menu and select HTML.
3. Open the Insert menu, and select File.
4. Select the desired file.
5. Click the dropdown menu to the right of the Insert button, and choose
"Insert as text".
Unfortunately, internal links don't seem to work in this approach. Tweaking
the HTML code might solve this, but that's a lot of work.
>From within Internet Explorer
-------------------------------
1. Open a new message in Outlook (Control-N).
2. Set its format to HTML: open the Format menu and select "HTML".
3. Open the newsletter file in Internet Explorer.
4. Select all the displayed text and graphics (Control-A).
5. Copy the selection and paste it into the Outlook message.
The basic message arrives intact, but the internal links don't work right:
they open the linked section in Internet Explorer rather than Outlook.
Again, manually tweaking the code might work, but that's a lot of work.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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