{"id":3299,"date":"2017-01-24T02:11:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T02:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/?p=3299"},"modified":"2017-01-24T02:27:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T02:27:26","slug":"outlook-com-removes-placeholder-links-in-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/outlook-com-removes-placeholder-links-in-email\/","title":{"rendered":"Outlook.com Removes Placeholder Links in Email"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When developing an email design, its common that we use placeholder URLs in links or we leave it blank. However Outlook.com does not like that and will alter your link if the url is missing or contains a bare anchor (href=&#8221;#&#8221;).<\/p>\n<h4>How Outlook.com alters your links<\/h4>\n<p>As discovered by <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/hteumeuleu\" target=\"_blank\">R\u00e9mi Parmentier<\/a> in this <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/hteumeuleu\/email-bugs\/issues\/10\" target=\"_blank\">bug report<\/a>, Outlook.com and Office 365 strips placeholder links and turns them from:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:default decode:true \" >\r\n&lt;a href=\"\"&gt;Link Text&lt;\/a&gt;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>to  <\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:default decode:true \" >\r\nLink Text\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>This also happens if the link contains a relative link (a link without the http:) or a bare anchor (href=&#8221;#&#8221;).<\/p>\n<h4>Solution<\/h4>\n<p>Naturally this won&#8217;t be a problem when you actually send the email because you&#8217;ll have the proper URL in the link, but here&#8217;s a solution you can use when the link is &#8220;to be determined&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The solution is to use a named anchor (ie. href=&#8221;#tbd&#8221;). Outlook.com will leave your link alone as long as you have characters after the &#8216;#&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The following is a recap:<\/p>\n<style>\n.tb1 td{font-size:12px;}\n<\/style>\n<table class=\"tb1\" border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=8 width=\"100%\" style=\"max-width:500px;\"\">\n<tr bgcolor=\"#cccccc\" style=\"font-weight:bold;\">\n<td>Email markup<\/td>\n<td>In Outlook.com<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;http:\/\/foo.com&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;http:\/\/foo.com&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/images\/yesno-yes.png\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td>Test<\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/images\/yesno-no.png\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;#&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td>Test<\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/images\/yesno-no.png\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;tbd&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td>[tbd]Test<\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/images\/yesno-no.png\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;#tbd&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td>&lt;a href=&#8221;#tbd&#8221;&gt;Test&lt;a&gt;<\/td>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/images\/yesno-yes.png\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><BR><BR><br \/>\n<div style=\"padding:10px; border: 2px solid #99C731;background-color:#FFF8DC;border-radius:5px;\">\n<form action=\"https:\/\/freshinbox1.createsend.com\/t\/i\/s\/adrmi\/\" method=\"post\" id=\"subForm\">\n<span class=\"fisub_header\" style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Subscribe to the #EmailGeeks Newsletter<\/span>\n<p><input id=\"fieldEmail\" name=\"cm-adrmi-adrmi\" type=\"email\" style=\"width:90%\" required placeholder=\"Your Email Address\" \/><\/p>\n<p><button type=\"submit\">Subscribe<\/button><\/p>\n<\/form>\n<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Outlook.com strips certain kinds of placeholder links. This article explains how you can use placeholders in your links that won&#8217;t be stripped by Outlook.com&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3299"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3318,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions\/3318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshinbox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}