This article details an issue that is occurring with Higher Logic Thrive Marketing Enterprise (Thrive Marketing Enterprise) email messages when they are opened in several versions of Microsoft Outlook.
The versions of Outlook that are affected by this are:
- Outlook 2007
- Outlook 2016
- Outlook 365 (only some versions)
Description
ISSUE: Line breaks are unexpectedly appearing in Thrive Marketing Enterprise email messages.
These lines are caused by transparent line breaks that are inserted by Outlook when it processes your message.
These line breaks:
- are 1px in height,
- show through to the background color of the message, and
- often follow or are directly before large sections, buttons, or images.
NOTE: This issue has been occurring for some time and it has been reported to Microsoft. However, it continues to occur in Thrive Marketing Enterprise and continues to impact all users, regardless of how the message is sent.
While we do not have a way of "stopping" these line breaks from occurring, our graphics team has come up with some workarounds that will reduce the number of them that occur in your messages.
Workarounds
This section details some of the workarounds that have been found to work best.
NOTE: We cannot 100% guarantee that these fixes will work, but they have proven successful in reducing the number of line breaks in messages.
Use even numbers
- Change all font sizes in your templates and messages to even numbers. For example, if a font size is set to 13px, change it to 14px.
- If your template or message uses dividers, set their heights to even numbers.
- Set the padding on your buttons and sections to even numbers.
Use Text content zones
These line breaks show between content sections in messages that contain a very long section with a lot of content (e.g., a lot of text or many images).
- If you plan to use a lot of text or many images in your message, we recommend that you "break up" this information across a few Text content zones.
Image size
- Keep images to less than 1500px in height.
Body color
- Change the body color of your message to match the background color of your message. If Outlook adds the line breaks, they will blend with the background and be "invisible."