After a recent post on how to solve the most common email rendering issues, we received a plethora of questions about image display issues in Outlook. Often times, image display issues are due to a recipients’ personal email settings. So - before you start to recode your entire email or question your coding skills, have a conversation with the recipient to see if it is indeed a personal setting on their end that can be easily updated. The guide (below) will help you, help your recipients fix their image display issues (if they are using Outlook as their client). If your recipient uses Outlook for their email, there are four causes of pictures not displaying in Outlook email messages:
1.Internet Explorer/Internet Options: Outlook processes images stored on the internet via an Internet Explorer Configuration So, if your subscriber doesn’t have Internet Explorer, the images may appear as alt-text only - or not at all.
To resolve this, the recipient can do one of the following:
1. Download the latest version of Internet Explorer, make sure that it is working properly, and ensure that the “Do not save encrypted files to disk” is not checked in the Security Section.
2.If they do not use (or want to download) Internet Explorer, they can update this setting via Internet Options on their computer’s Control Panel. Though this is the quicker fix, we recommend Fix #1 - especially if they use Outlook to check their emails. This will help with images in all email newsletters that they receive.
2. Picture Placeholder Settings: If the recipient is seeing a blank box where the picture should be, they may need to update their picture placeholder settings in Outlook. To do this, open Outlook and go to File>Options>Mail>Editor Options>Advanced>Scroll to “Email Display Options” and make sure that “Show Picture Placeholders” is unchecked.
3. Security/Trust Center Settings: If they are using Outlook 2003 (or a more recent version), images may be blocked for security reasons, making “images” look like this:
To fix this, they can update their Trust Center Settings by opening Outlook and going to File>Options>Trust Center>and choosing one of the many options that populate. However, we recommend selecting the second option - which automatically downloads images from recipients that are on their “safe list”. They’ll then need to add you to their safe list. To do this, open Outlook>in the Home Tab at the top, click the arrow next to “Junk Email”>In the drop-down that appears, select “Junk Email Options”>In the window pop-up, select the “Safe Senders” tab > add your email address here.
4. Images not working? Try reducing the image size to ~250 KB or less. If you're on a Microsoft computer, open Paint and select Resize (at the top). Save your reduced file as a new image on your desktop. Open your desktop folder and select "View Details" at the top to view the image file size.
We hope that these quick tips are helpful! For more information, check out the resources that we used to build this post (below). And, of course, if these don’t work - it may be time to take a look at your code. Check out this post for more information on how to craft emails that render properly.
If you get stuck along the way, do not hesitate to contact your ClearVantage Association Management Software team!
Resources
- Litmus
- MailChimp
- MS Outlook
- Email Monks
- SlipStick