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Refine text editing abilities in template emails

Daniel Humphreys

March 16, 2011 19:48

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Hi, we are having trouble with the template email system.  Right now it can be a real trial to edit the template emails.  If you update an email by pasting in new text, the fonts get all mixed up and there is no ability to make the fonts uniform on the template email page. 

There is also a problem with spacing that is unexplainable.  You make the spacing look just how you like it and press save, but when you send a test email to yourself the spacing is totally different. 

I tried to edit an email, changing it in a Word document and then pasting it into the template.  It had a different outcome every time with different fonts and spacing.  It can be really frustrating, causing you to retype the whole template on the template page in order to make changes.

Thanks,

Daniel

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4 comments

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  Adam Sentz March 16, 2011 20:53

  @Daniel - several of the problems you mention will likely stem from the fact that you are using Word to edit your email template. Microsoft Word uses non-standard character entities that cause all kinds of problems when they move to the web environment.

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  Daniel Humphreys March 16, 2011 22:21

  Hi Adam,

  You were right with using Microsoft as it fixed some of the font issues, although it still shows funny characters in the preview of the template, but not in the template itself or the received email.  It would be nice to be able to use Word as that is our main platform at our institution and would assume that would be the case at many institutions.

  However, I am still having an issue with spacing.  I took an email, pasted it into notepad to eliminate all formatting, then pasted it into OpenOffice and formatted it accordingly.  When I pasted it back into the template, I had various spacing issues.  For one email an extra space is added at each line break.  When I deleted the space it looked normal in the template but when I did a test email there are no spaces at all, just a block of text.  My suspicion is that the template system needs the line spacing to be set to a specific setting (like .008) to display properly.  If your default setting in your text editor is different then it does not display properly.

  Thats my 5 cents anyway.

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  Daniel Humphreys March 16, 2011 22:26

  Really, the main issue is that in some cases the text you see in the preview and email screen is not necessarily the way it will look for the recipient.

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  Adam Sentz March 16, 2011 22:51

  The way an email is rendered is handled client-side, so there isn't really any way that we can guarantee what you are seeing will be how it will look to the recipient. That's said, we'll certainly look into the issues you've mentioned. Thanks!