2

I'm trying to send a nicely formatted email with an icalendar to a user who's using outlook 2010, but the result is horrible. If the file is removed everything looks great.

I thought I was doing something wrong, so I've tried the same scenario using Google's calendar and got the same result.

In following image, on the right side you can see how google's html is all messed up when it arrives from server. on the left side, i've saved the email as eml changed the invitation mime-type to something else and the email is fixed: results

You may find the sample two EML files here on github:

original_mail

fixed_mail_invite_not_working

As you'll see, the only difference is the calendar mime in line 172.

Does any one have any ideas why is this happening? is there a workaround?? or a fix?

Update: one of our clients sent me a screen-shot of his outlook, in this case you may see that outlook displays the html better and also process the event... any ideas? enter image description here

Thanks, Roey

Roey
  • 1,647
  • 21
  • 16

1 Answers1

6

Outlook internally uses RTF for the appointments, tasks and contacts, so your HTML will always be (imperfectly) converted to RTF.

There isn't much you can do besides tweaking your HTML until Outlook likes it.

Dmitry Streblechenko
  • 62,942
  • 4
  • 53
  • 78
  • this sounds like a bug... do you have any reason why is that the case? did microsoft ever explained? – Roey Nov 14 '14 at 15:07
  • HTML and RTF are very different formats. Don't expect a 100% fidelity conversion. Even if there is a bug, the only thing you can do is tweak your HTML until Outlook likes it. – Dmitry Streblechenko Nov 14 '14 at 16:59
  • I know what rtf is, I just don't understand the differece between an invite and a regular mail and why it's not being fixed... this is 2014!!! – Roey Nov 14 '14 at 20:08
  • Regular messages can be plain text, HTML, or RTF. Appointments, tasks and contacts are RTF only. I can't really tell you why it is not getting fixed - I do not work for Microsoft. And even if they fix it, you will still have the old versions of Outlook where the problem is present. – Dmitry Streblechenko Nov 14 '14 at 20:12
  • Ok, thanks Dmitry. I've marked your reply as an answer. Thanks for your time. :) – Roey Nov 15 '14 at 07:11
  • Thanks this answer helped me a lot ! – kuldeep Jul 20 '17 at 12:41