Experience the difference of "Elite".

Some emails wrap, others don't

Rich S
Feb 2, 2019 11:02 PM
Joined Dec, 2018 301 posts

I have 3 automated emails that are sent, one at create and the other two are day before/day of arrival.

Two of the emails wrap and are therefore easily read on my phone, but the third doesn't. Each row just extends wide across the screen and in order to read the email I have to zoom in and slide the screen back and forth on each line. I suspect the issue is a table I had copy/pasted into the email. It's handy to have it, but it's kind of wide.

Before I start experimenting, I was wondering if there is an way to preview how an email will render on a cell phone. Or some rules like don't use tables or wide images.

Paul W
Feb 4, 2019 4:11 PM
OR Team Member Joined Jun, 2009 825 posts

Are these emails all custom templates (ie. that you created from scratch) or emails that are sent from the system as a hard-coded notification? If they are custom templates, then it should be easy to figure out and clean up the problem. Give me the names and I'll take a look at the raw HTML of those 3 emails. There might be some crud in there that can be cleaned up.

Rich S
Feb 4, 2019 5:12 PM
Joined Dec, 2018 301 posts

Paul,

I'm only using custom templates, not any of the one's that OR has built in.

Take a look at "Thanks for Booking !!" I already removed the table structure which is an improvement, but I'm sure there is html cleanup that can improve it since many of the rows still don't wrap naturally.

Is there a way for me to do it myself? Would be nice to have a predictable way to test for the content to be mobile friendly.

Chris Hynes
Feb 8, 2019 7:37 PM
OR Team Member Joined Oct, 2012 1400 posts

Which parts are popping out as not wrapping correctly? I scanned through and it looks like it's mostly there with the wrapping. Only things I saw were a couple places where there are multiple spaces that may look weird if they're at the beginning of the line. That you can fix by removing the extra spaces and keeping it to one. The other thing was some long URL's -- you can fix that by editing them using the link/chains button and setting a different "Text to display" so that it's a bit shorter.

Are there other areas where you're seeing a wrapping issue? Maybe send over a screenshot? (we don't do photos on the forums, so go to imgur.com and post it there and then give me a link)

Rich S
Feb 9, 2019 9:59 PM
Joined Dec, 2018 301 posts

I mailed you at the support email - the two images are there now.

Rich S
Feb 14, 2019 11:35 AM
Joined Dec, 2018 301 posts

SOLVED

Paul (or Chris, can't remember which ;-)) emailed me about this, and those tips along with some experimenting gave me the answer ...

Recap - I noticed that some of my automated emails, when viewed on a cellphone, didn't wrap. Each row appeared in a tiny font, and while I could pinch/zoom to make it larger, reading a paragraph was very hard. But this only happened with some emails, not all.

Problem 1: I had copy/pasted from microsoft Word a table. It looked great, helped readability, but it was somewhat wide. Removing that helped a little

Problem 2: Long links. I had about 5 links in the email that I had to replace with shortened links. Was easy to do in the OR email template editor, I just replaced the 'Text to Display' with a short description. In general I don't like doing that since I believe folks are scared to click on links, but I'm a trusted person to guests who have already paid me so not a big deal.

The way I tested all this was simple... I just kept emailing the original template to myself while deleting parts of the text. The first test I deleted 80% of the email and it looked fine. Then I tried 50% and noticed a difference (due to the first long link). Was easy after that.

I'm sharing this to help others... it's worth looking at your automated template emails in various cellphones (iphone and android) so you can see what your guests receive. Readable emails are sure to cut down on last minute panic emails/calls!