Reminder: Background Images Don't Render in Outlook 2007!

I received Casio's newsletter today and I opened it because the subject line referred to the new Exilim EX-S10 which I bought on the airport last week. (It's all about relevance, right?)

This is what I saw in my Outlook 2007 inbox:

I immediately noticed that something wasn't rendering properly. This is what I was meant to see:

What is the problem here? Simple: the camera picture was included as a background image and background images don't render in Outlook 2007.

Comments

[wf]

this is goood but there is a step missing for two. "type the following" (where is this line)

[Joe Jacinto]

I tried several procedures and eventually developped the following that worked for me.
If you try it and also workas for you, please let me know!

How to insert a background image on Outlook 2007 e-mail

1. Create the image you want to use and save it as image001.gif (or any other name, for that matter) on your stationery settings folder, usually C:\Documents and Settings\your_access_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationery\image001.gif
Remember, your_access_name is your access name, i.e., do not type your_access_name.

2. Now, open up Notepad (if you don’t know where this is go to START, RUN and type notepad.exe) and write the following:

You may just copy the above and edit your name and the file name.

3. Save in the same directory
C:\Documents and Settings\your_access_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationery as The_name_you_want.htm.
To do this you have to go to File, Save as, change the Save as type from *.txt to All files and then entering The_name_you_want.htm on the File Name box.

4. In OUTLOOK go to Tools, Options, Mail Format, Stationery and Fonts and select Theme.

5. Look for The_name_you_want (Stationery), select and click OK.

6. Now, still in Outlook, open up a New message and it should open with your background.

7. If the image is small it will repeat itself otherwise not. There are other commands that can be embedded to repeat or not-repeat: I’m still working on those.

8. If you want the image to be very faint you have to edit it first using brightness and contrast.

9. You may create several different backgrounds and then access in Outlook by going to the main menu and, instead of starting with NEW, go to Actions, New Mail Message Using, More Stationery and, if you saved the drawings and the notepads on your Stationery folder, select from the items on the window.

Joe Jacinto

[dude spellings]

in case you don't already know, the reasons for this is because MS changed the way that they render HTML in outlook 2007. In all previous versions of Outlook, the HTML rendering engine was Internet Explorer. In Outlook 2007, they switched it to use MS Word for the rendering engine. If you are like me, you might be asking "why". The answer is because Ms was getting complaints that people would create HTML emails in Outlook (which uses Word as the creation tool), then would send the emails to themselves and others, and Outlook would render differently because the rendering tool was Internet Explorer. So, in order to fix the problem, they made the rendering engine worse instead of making the creation tool better.