How do I format a String in an email so Outlook will print the line breaks?

Question

I'm trying to send an email in Java but when I read the body of the email in Outlook, it's gotten rid of all my linebreaks. I'm putting \n at the ends of the lines but is there something special I need to do other than that? The receivers are always going to be using Outlook.

I found a page on microsoft.com that says there's a 'Remove line breaks' "feature" in Outlook so does this mean there's no solution to get around that other than un-checking that setting?

Thanks

Answer 1

You need to use \r\n as a solution.

Answer 2

I've just been fighting with this today. Let's call the behavior of removing the extra line breaks "continuation." A little experimenting finds the following behavior:

• Every message starts with continuation off.
• Lines less than 40 characters long do not trigger continuation, but if continuation is on, they will have their line breaks removed.
• Lines 40 characters or longer turn continuation on. It remains on until an event occurs to turn it off.
• Lines that end with a period, question mark, exclamation point or colon turn continuation off. (Outlook assumes it's the end of a sentence?)
• Lines that turn continuation off will start with a line break, but will turn continuation back on if they are longer than 40 characters.
• Lines that start or end with a tab turn continuation off.
• Lines that start with 2 or more spaces turn continuation off.
• Lines that end with 3 or more spaces turn continuation off.

Please note that I tried all of this with Outlook 2007. YMMV.
So if possible, end all bullet items with a sentence-terminating punctuation mark, a tab, or even three spaces.

Answer 3

You can force a line break in outlook when attaching one (or two?) tab characters (\t) just before the line break (CRLF).

Example:

This is my heading in the mail\t\n
Just here Outlook is forced to begin a new line.

It seems to work on Outlook 2010. Please test if this works on other versions.

See also Outlook autocleaning my line breaks and screwing up my email format

Answer 4

Microsoft Outlook 2002 and above removes "extra line breaks" from text messages by default (kb308319). That is, Outlook seems to simply ignore line feed and/or carriage return sequences in text messages, running all of the lines together.

This can cause problems if you're trying to write code that will automatically generate an email message to be read by someone using Outlook.

For example, suppose you want to supply separate pieces of information each on separate lines for clarity, like this:

Transaction needs attention!
PostedDate: 1/30/2009
Amount: $12,222.06
TransID: 8gk288g229g2kg89
PostalCode: 91543

Your Outlook recipient will see the information all smashed together, as follows:

Transaction needs attention! PostedDate: 1/30/2009 Amount: $12,222.06 TransID: 8gk288g229g2kg89 ZipCode: 91543

There doesn't seem to be an easy solution. Alternatives are:

1. You can supply two sets of line breaks between each line. That does stop Outlook from combining the lines onto one line, but it then displays an extra blank line between each line (creating the opposite problem). By "supply two sets of line breaks" I mean you should use "\r\n\r\n" or "\r\r" or "\n\n" but not "\r\n" or "\n\r".
2. You can supply two spaces at the beginning of every line in the body of your email message. That avoids introducing an extra blank line between each line. But this works best if each line in your message is fairly short, because the user may be previewing the text in a very narrow Outlook window that wraps the end of each line around to the first position on the next line, where it won't line up with your two-space-indented lines. This strategy has been used for some newsletters.
3. You can give up on using a plain text format, and use an html format.

Answer 5

I had the same issue, and found a solution. Try this: %0D%0A to add a line break.

Answer 6

I have used html line break instead of "\n" . It worked fine.

Answer 7

Adding "\t\r\n" ( \t for TAB) instead of "\r\n" worked for me on Outlook 2010 . Note : adding 3 spaces at end of each line also do same thing but that looks like a programming hack!

Answer 8

You need to send HTML emails. With <br />s in the email, you will always have your line breaks.

Answer 9

I had been struggling with all of the above solutions and nothing helped here, because I used a String variable (plain text from a JTextPane) in combination with "text/html" formatting in my e-mail library.

So, the solution to this problem is to use "text/plain", instead of "text/html" and no need to replace return characters at all:

MimeBodyPart messageBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
messageBodyPart.setContent(message, "text/plain");

Answer 10

Put the text in <pre> Tags and outlook will format and display the text correctly.

i defined it in CSS inline in HTML Body like:

CSS:

pre {
 font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
}

i defined the font-family to have to font set.

HTML:

<td width="70%"><pre>Entry Date/Time:       2013-09-19 17:06:25
Entered By:     Chris

worklog mania

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Entry Date/Time:        2013-09-19 17:05:42
Entered By:     Chris

this is a new Worklog Entry</pre></td>

Answer 11

Because it is a query, only percent escaped characters work, means %0A gives you a line break. For example,

<a href="mailto:someone@gmail.com?Subject=TEST&body=Hi there,%0A%0AHow are you?%0A%0AThanks">email to me</a>

Answer 12

The trick is to use the encodeURIComponent() functionality from js:

var formattedBody = "FirstLine \n Second Line \n Third Line";
var mailToLink = "mailto:x@y.com?body=" + encodeURIComponent(formattedBody);

RESULT:

FirstLine
SecondLine
ThirdLine

Answer 13

For Outlook 2010 and later versions, use \t\n rather than using \r\n.

Answer 14

\r\n will not work until you set body type as text.

message.setBody(MessageBody.getMessageBodyFromText(msg));
BodyType type = BodyType.Text;
message.getBody().setBodyType(type);

Answer 15

RESOLVED IN MY APPLICATION

In my application, I was trying to send an email whose message body was typed by the user in text area. When mail was send, outlook automatically removed line break entered by user.

e.g if user entered
Yadav
Mahesh

outlook displayed it as
YadavMahesh

Resolution: I changed the line break character "\r\n" with "\par " ( remember to hit space at the end of RTF code "\par" )and line breaks are restrored.

Cheers,
Mahesh

Answer 16

If you can add in a '.' (dot) character at the end of each line, this seems to prevent Outlook ruining text formatting.

Answer 17

Try this:

message.setContent(new String(body.getBytes(), "iso-8859-1"),
                    "text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"");

Regards, Mohammad Rasool Javeed

Answer 18

Try \r\c instead of \n.

EDIT: I think @Robert Wilkinson had it right. \r\n. Memory just isn't what it used to be.

Answer 19

The \n largely works for us, but Outlook does sometimes take it upon itself to remove the line breaks as you say.

Answer 20

I have a good solution that I tried it, it is just add the Char(13) at end of line like the following example:

Dim S As String
 S = "Some Text" & Chr(13)
 S = S + "Some Text" & Chr(13)

Answer 21

if the message is text/plain using, \r\n should work; if the message type is text\html, use < p/>

Answer 22

This must be helpful for you. try "%0A" instead of "\n". The real source is here.

You need to add "%0A" where ever you need a new line in your code. In your case

 abcParameters.put(defConstants.REPORT_MESSAGE, "Invalid file sent by tt. Hence ffgghh  was unable
              to process it : " + s+ "%0A" +e.getMessage().toString());

Answer 23

I also had this issue with plain/text mail type. Earlier, I used "\n\n" but there was two line breaks. Then, I used "\t\n" and it worked. I was using StringBuffer in java to append content.
The content got printed in next line in Outlook 2010 mail.

Answer 24

I also had this issue with plain/text mail type.Form Feed \f worked for me.

Answer 25

Sometimes you have to enter \r\n twice to force outlook to do the break.

This will add one empty line but all the lines will have break.

Answer 26

if work need to be done with formatted text with out html encoding. it can be easy achieved with following scenario that creates div element on the fly and using <pre></pre> html element to keep formatting.

var email_body = htmlEncode($("#Body").val());

 function htmlEncode(value) {
    return "<pre>" + $('<div/>').text(value).html() + "</pre>";
}

Answer 27

Not sure if it was mentioned above but Outlook has a checkbox setting called "Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages" and is checked by default. It is located in a different spot for different versions of Outlook but for 2010 go to the "File" tab. Select "Options => Mail" Scroll down to "Message format" Uncheck the checkbox.