Create website-style emails

Helpline Q&A Directory

Lots of companies are sending emails that are like web pages, which contain links to their sites. Can this be done in Outlook Express and, if so, how?

The message viewer in Outlook Express is essentially an instance of the Internet Explorer web browser, so it can display anything that can appear in a web page. However, this is far too much freedom than is good for the average user, especially the message recipient. Depending on how the recipient's system is set up, viewing a message that contains links to an external web page may cause their computer to automatically try to connect to the internet, incurring unwanted connection charges.

Some companies include script code in the HTML that does things like open a full screen browser window showing their web page. This sort of thing is very irritating and we hope that you are not intending to make use of the facility to do things like that. Virus writers are exploiting embedded script code to do things like launch attachments automatically when the recipient views the message.

We're sure you aren't intending to do that, but be aware that because of the security threat posed by script code in mail messages, many companies and ISPs may configure their servers to delete or bounce messages containing script code. Trying to be clever with HTML in mail is quite a good way to make yourself unpopular.

That's the lecture over. If you still want to create HTML-formatted messages using Outlook Express, here's how: open the message editor and check that the Rich Text (HTML) option on the Format menu is selected. Above the message-editing pane you should see a toolbar containing buttons for a range of formatting options, including 'Create a hyperlink' and 'Insert an image'.

Use the Create a hyperlink button to insert links to web pages. To display an image in your message that's stored on a website, position the cursor where you want the image to be, click the Insert an image button, then enter the image's full URL in the Picture Source field.

Outlook Express doesn't offer all the features of a web page editor - for example, there's no support for frames or tables - but you can easily work round this. If you click on the View menu and select Source Edit, you should see three tabs appear below the editing pane. On the Edit tab is the Wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editor. On the Source tab is an HTML editor.

By editing the HTML code you should be able to do anything that would be valid on a web page. You could, for example, make the message body a frame which contains a page from your website, or insert some JavaScript. You can use the Preview pane to inspect your handiwork before putting it into effect. The scope of what you can do in an HTML-format mail message is limited only by your skills as an HTML coder.