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Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Archived)

Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

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I'll try to simplify this scenario as much as possible as our complete use-case is a bit complicated.

On our Case form we have a lookup field to an email record.  I also have a workflow that sends an email to the Contact.  In the body of the workflow's email  I display the Description field from the lookup email.  What I've found is if the lookup refers to an HTML email that was received from Outlook, the outbound email from the workflow will show Font Definitions and Style Definitions when it's received by the Contact.  The email message within CRM doesn't show this, though.

Example:

/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:PMingLiU;
panose-1:2 2 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@PMingLiU";
panose-1:2 2 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#0563C1;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#954F72;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:windowtext;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
-->

I tried researching this and a few online articles said this was an issue with older versions of Outlook and that upgrading to Outlook 2013 would solve the problem.  However I am using Outlook 2013.  My guess is CRM's email editor/router doesn't know what to do with this Font and Style definitions information.  Does anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of it?  I can only think to check the beginning of the Description field to see if it begins with this text and then just delete it.

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  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    The coincidence of this is uncanny.  We recently made an update to our system and changed some of our workflows and we're seeing this issue again.  The reason we haven't seen it for the past few months is because the workflow we initially saw the issue with was changed so it no longer used the Email Description field.

    We're seeing it again because we changed a different workflow to include the Email Description for a different reason and it's showing up again.  So the issue is not fixed in CRM 2016.

  • Jorge S Profile Picture
    Jorge S on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    Thanks for your reply, good to know it's not happening on CRM 2016.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    I just sent several emails between our CRM Dev server and my Outlook and threw every formatting option I could think of at it and almost everything came through just fine.  There were a few uncommon formatting options that CRM didn't do, but I never saw Font Definitions like above.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    I never found a solution for this.  Since I posted above we've upgrade to CRM 2016 and so far I don't think I've seen this issue again, but I should easily be able to test it by sending a few emails back-and-forth from my own Outlook email and CRM.  We're also using Outlook 2013.

  • Jorge S Profile Picture
    Jorge S on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    Hi, did you find a solution for this?

    I see this only happens when using Outlook client, I'm now on 2013 version.

    Editing workflows in Chrome did not work.

    Will appreciate any response, thanks.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    For some reason with Chrome, 'Save & Close' won't save the email message in the workflow.  I did try Firefox but that didn't help.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    Now that I know the problem I found a few related threads:

    community.dynamics.com/.../170667

    community.dynamics.com/.../103864

    Per the second thread, I'll have to try editing my workflow emails in Chrome to see if that solves the problem.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    I found out I could use Notepad++ to write HTML and then open the saved HTML file in Outlook by going into the Run menu and selecting 'Send Via Outlook'.  So I copied the source of the "bad" email into Notepadd++ and started making changes to it and confirmed that Outlook doesn't like the <br/> tag and simply deleting them makes the email display correctly.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    I'm not a web developer, but looking at the html source of various Outlook emails, I think the issue is with the <br/> statements in the email that's showing the Font & Style definitions.  The definitions begin immediately after the first <br/> statement and end just before the next <br> statement.  The other emails I looked at don't use <br/> contain this statement.

    After a bit of research, I read that <br/> with it's closing forward-slash is for XHTML and that Outlook might not support XHTML, or at least not fully since it is adding line-breaks in the rendered email.

    So I'm now trying to think of a way to replace <br/> with <br> in CRM's outbound emails to see if that indeed solves the problem.

  • KG_CRM Profile Picture
    KG_CRM on at
    RE: Outbound Email Messages showing Font & Style Definitions from Outlook

    One correction.  I did a test where the lookup field linked to an email received from Outlook, but the workflow then sent it's email to Gmail and these Font and Style definitions did not appear.  These are only appearing when the received email is from Outlook and the sent email also goes to Outlook.  So...maybe this is an issue with Outlook instead of CRM?

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