how to display background color in outlook 2010 html email?

Question

My problem is related to Microsoft Outlook 2010. Actually I want to publish my HTML newsletter in Outlook 2010, but the main problem which I am facing is styling problem it's not showing color and all when the newsletter is published in Outlook 2010. please help me out if you know how to set color and css style in Outlook.

neha please show us your code... or you can paste your code here :- http://tinkerbin.com — Shailender Arora, Nov 16 '12 at 05:17
Appears Outlook 365 in 2023 still doesn't support css like tr.highlight > td {background-color: #ffdd66;} - have to use something like: — Ben in CA, Feb 20 '23 at 18:21

score 49 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 16 '12 at 05:26

49

This method works across email clients:

<table bgcolor="#3399ff" style="background:#3399ff;"><tr><td>test</td></tr></table>

answered Nov 16 '12 at 05:26

marissajmc

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4

Make sure you use the hex value as shown above. Named colors (i.e. "grey") are inconsistently supported across various versions of Outlook. – Whatever Man Apr 18 '15 at 17:59
2

Is there any issue using "background:" as opposed to the more explicit "background-color:" ? – Kalnode Sep 12 '19 at 00:49
@WhateverMan Honestly, why did Microsoft this? The older versions of Outlook are such a pain. I was using the name of the colour and until I read your hint I never thought about such stupid reason why it was ignored. – Peter VARGA Jun 21 '21 at 19:09

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 28 '15 at 03:27

<table><tr><td bgcolor="#3399ff">test</td></tr></table>

This will NOT work on Outlook 2010. If you want to style background-color in Outlook, you'll have to put your background style in style attribute, like this

<table><tr><td bgcolor="#3399ff" style="background-color:#3399ff">test</td></tr></table>

Plus: If you want to style background IMAGE (not color), default Outlook 2007+ will not support it, but you can do some tricks to make that happen. Check out this link : https://litmus.com/community/learning/25-understanding-background-images-in-email http://backgrounds.cm/

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 26 '20 at 02:15

3

I was struggling with the same issue and found out that Outlook doesn't support the name of the color like modern browsers. I changed:

<tr style="background-color: lightgray">

to

<tr style="background-color: #d3d3d3">

and Outlook loved it.

answered Aug 26 '20 at 02:15

Alex Trusler

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score 2 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 16 '14 at 12:48

2

You can also do it this way - styling in the td cell.

<table><tr><td bgcolor="#3399ff">test</td></tr></table>

edited Jul 16 '14 at 12:48

mmmmmm

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answered Jul 09 '14 at 12:59

ajcoder

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 16 '12 at 05:28

1

the background-color property works in Outlook 2010.

reference: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

answered Nov 16 '12 at 05:28

Pietro Ferrero

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how to display background color in outlook 2010 html email?

5 Answers5