How to stop an email address going dark blue and being clickable in Outlook email client/ IPad mail client

Question

I am trying to create non clickable email addresse in application generated HTML emails for when users signup for a trial. Outlook and other mail client annoyinglyconverts these to mailto links.

I know this has been answered before, but without success for me.

see: Previous SO Answer

My web application includes a user name(email address format) in the signup email, and of course email clients such as Outlook and IPad Mail recognise the email address format and immediately wraps the text to be clickable as a MailTo, but also to show it in dark blue, as a link would be. I just want to show it as a piece of text, non clickable and in a custom colour. Also I have tried adding non existent tags such as <Z/>, but this just comes out in the text. I would not wish to have strange replaced characters appear such as "jim AT bloggs.com" as this will confuse the user.

So how can I make "jim@bloggs.com" appear as "jim@bloggs.com" in my emails without being clickable and in a colour of my choosing.

EDIT1

 Your Username is:&nbsp; <span>jim&lt;z&gt;@&lt;/z&gt;bloggs.com</span>

This is as a result of .Replace("@","@")

So I guess that was wrong, and my replacement string needs to be something else?

EDIT2:

 Your Username is:&nbsp; <span style="color: #656565;font-weight:bold;">jim&amp;commat;bloggs.com</span>

So "&commat;" is appearing in the text which is non clickable and in the correct colour, but I really need @ rather than &commat; in the username. By the way I am replacing this text in code using .NET's Razor:

Username.Replace("@","&commat;");

However I guess the principle would be similar for any server language.

If a non existing html tag such as the is printed out in the e-mail as text, then you are not sending the e-mail as HTML. Show us the code you are using to send the e-mail. — HaukurHaf, Nov 24 '14 at 21:37
&commat; is the html entity code for `@`. if your html email is working properly, then using &commat; will prevent the mail client from seeing an email address and auto-linking it. — Marc B, Nov 24 '14 at 21:38
Funny thing: I just tried copying 2 addresses from a premade browser page into an html-formatted message and Outlook rendered the one containing `&commat;` as a hyperlink and left the address containing the regular `@` alone. — Filburt, Nov 24 '14 at 21:48
Could you post your code? I don't understand the question. Is the HTML generated by the application? Is the HTML editable? If so, you could just remove the tags surrounding the username. — shottyrockets, Nov 24 '14 at 21:48

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 25 '14 at 01:15

If you format your text line this you should be able to control the color and disable the link.

<a href="#" style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;cursor:default;">user@email.com</a>

Using !important will cause this to break. And placing the style on any other element than an anchor will cause this to break.

The same thing works for telephone numbers.

<a href="#" style="text-decoration:none;color:#000000;cursor:default;">(800)123-4567</a>

How to stop an email address going dark blue and being clickable in Outlook email client/ IPad mail client

1 Answers1