Outlook 2007 Rendering

Unless you've been hiding under a rock you are probably aware, Microsoft has made some changes to Outlook 2007 - primarily using Word as the rendering engine as opposed to Internet Explorer. We told you about this in our January 16th post. According to eROI there was 3% adoption rate of those already using Outlook in the first 10 days after the release. According to MarketingSherpa, all versions of Outlook make up about 79.6% of business email clients. Think about the implications this can have on your email marketing campaign.

Within the next six months, we can only assume that the adoption rate will continue to increase, meaning that email design standards will need to be adjusted accordingly and quickly.


Your design team should be aware of the following:


The most important thing to remember is that Outlook 2007 does not support background images. If there is text that is over an image that is not one solid color, the text will need to be hard-coded into the image.

Some other points to keep in mind include:

Poor Background Color Support

No Support for Float or Position

Shocking Box Model Support

For more information, click here, here and here