Links in the Mail App

[laestrella]

Sometimes whenever someone sends me a link in an email (this happens especially from someone with an ipad) the app doesn't recognize it as a link but just text. If I open the same email on my Android phone in the Gmail app or in the browser I see it as a link. What gives?

 

[ctitanic]

Emails can be sent in text or html format. Some mail clients are prepared to recognize links, emails and even phone member within a text. Mail as far as I know does not do that.

 

[laestrella]

Ugh. That's annoying. Thanks for the info.

 

[sharpuser]

Outlook 2013 runs wonderfully on Windows 8.1 and the Surface devices. Beautifully renders links and HTML mail. Try that.

 

[laestrella]

Outlook 2013 runs wonderfully on Windows 8.1 and the Surface devices. Beautifully renders links and HTML mail. Try that.

I'm using outlook for work and I'm nervous about mixing work and personal email in the same app. I was wondering about setting them up under two different profiles but not sure how that works. Thinking it might be tedious swapping back and forth. Maybe I'm wrong?

 

[jnjroach]

Outlook 2013 supports multiple and separate Inboxes in the same Profile, I've had 2 Exchange, Hotmail (Outlook.com currently) and 1 IMAP Accounts in Outlook for years.... its smart enough to know which account you're in and if not you can switch the "From" before sending the email.

 

[sharpuser]

I have five email accounts set up in Outlook, with my default (when I'm on my work device) set to my company email account, and when home, one of my personal accounts. I also have a gmail, and iCloud address set up, along with an extra one.

Outlook does a great job of keeping them as separate as I want them to be.
Works similar to email accounts on your smartphone.
And, as jnjroach says, you may switch the "From:" account on the fly.

 

[laestrella]

I just added my personal account to Outlook and the links work as expected!! But now I have another problem. Why don't HTML emails display properly? They show up perfectly in the regular mail app but in Outlook some of them are not showing as they should; spacing is off, pictures are missing. I enabled automatic downloading of pictures but that doesn't help. Doesn't make sense that it shows up correctly in Mail and not in Outlook. Seems like I can't have it all.

 

[sharpuser]

Sorry you're having this problem laestrella.

Despite almost fixing the issue with Outlook 2013, Microsoft chose to continue using a renderer from Word to display the HTML mail, rather than an engine from Internet Explorer or the Mail app. There has been lots of discussion about this, and Microsoft probably intended to make this change, but did not. Maybe next time.

Email authors who are aware of this have workarounds, but many don't use them, because Outlook should, well, just work.

Refreshing or re-opening should eventually bring those missing pictures in. Sometimes, when opening mail which just arrived, Outlook needs just a few more seconds to fetch the pictures via the Exchange Server.

I just got used to it. But you can use Mozilla Thunderbird or other 3rd party clients, also. Mozilla, in particular, has a great HTML renderer, since Web browsing is their forte.