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Currently, all emails being sent from Outlook do not download and display images in Outlook. There are many possible reasons for this ranging from:

  • Outlooks own built-in Security
  • Outlook's rendering engine
  • Most Outlook versions on Windows don’t have good support for the CSS box model or things like flexbox, CSS Grid, and floats.

I was just wondering if there is anyone out there who knows a code solution that would allow an image to render and show on Outlook without Outlook prompting the User to download the image?

Nathan
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Girum
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2 Answers2

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Outlook desktop may show images embedded via the CID method, but you can't do this via MailChimp, and this method does not work for non-Outlook users.

Therefore, you'd need to use Outlook-only code for the CID part, and the normal method for others.

You first attach the image to the email (which you can't do in MailChimp).

Then add a MIME header to set its CID (Content-ID).

The actual code for that is programming specific; e.g. Using Content-ID and cid for embedded email images in Thunderbird

Then reference it in the message body by setting its CID (Content-ID) - not image name - and using a standard HTML tag:

<!--[if mso]>
<img src="cid:some-image-cid" alt="img" />
<![endif]-->
<!--[if !mso]>-->
<img src="imagename.jpg" alt="img" />
<!--<![endif]-->

As you can see, this is not straightforward, so few (if any) do it this way. Please keep in mind the whole purpose of image blocking is to help prevent spam, and to stop adult pictures showing. So it's probably not likely to work, or work for long (until you get blacklisted).

Nathan
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Please do not try and get around rendering safety nets, which providers have implemented on purpose!

There are ways for subscribers to turn off the automatic image blocking, but it's there for a reason, do not try and circumvent user security for your own benefit.

More details here on how users can turn off image blocking but also the reason it has been implemented in the first place: https://www.howtogeek.com/398897/how-to-force-outlook-to-download-images-if-youre-sure-its-a-good-idea/