Have you ever received an email that didn’t quite look right?

When Microsoft released Outlook 2007, they changed the way that it displayed HTML. Instead of using Internet Explorer as it’s “rendering” engine, they started using Word. The idea was that if you sent an email from Outlook 2007 to someone else using Outlook 2007, it would display exactly the way it was created.

The problem with this approach is that if an Outlook 2007 user received an HTML email from someone using different software, it wouldn’t display correctly. This is because most email software is based on current web standards, where Word is not.

Many of us in communications had hoped that with the release of Outlook 2010, these problems would be resolved. Unfortunately, the Microsoft Office development team decided to not include web standard HTML rendering, and will continue with the existing Word rendering engine.

This means that Outlook 2010 will continue to display HTML emails incorrectly. Here’s what the same email would look like in Outlook 2000 and 2010.

There is currently an online campaign using Twitter to encouraging Microsoft to fix Outlook 2010. If you would like to add your voice, post on Twitter or reply to the Microsoft blog.