Bad Email Formatting Bug - Forced Line Breaks?

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Level 1

8 points

Bad Email Formatting Bug - Forced Line Breaks?

This has been driving me nuts for a long time now. Just submitted the bug to Apple through the bug reporter site. Has anyone else seen or experienced this and know of a fix or workaround? Seems to be a problem with the Mail client itself, unfortunately. It's not an issue on any other ActiveSync device that I've been able to get my hands on. Android, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, etc. I really hope they fix this.

Summary:

The mail client on iPhone 3.1.3 (also noticed in earlier versions) is forcing unnecessary line breaks in Exchange based email accounts, causing improper and broken display to recipients viewing the message in Outlook. This is an iPhone specific bug and not our Exchange environment as I have tested various other devices using ActiveSync and they do not have this issue.

Steps to Reproduce:

Using an Exchange based account, compose an new email to someone else on Exchange with Outlook. Type at least several sentences in a single paragraph. Rather than a clean, unbroken view, the recipient will receive a chopped up looking message if "remove extra line breaks" is not enabled in Outlook. Additionally, if the recipient is using any sort of mobile device it will appear broken and chopped up.

Expected Results:

A properly formatted email without unnecessary line breaks.

Actual Results:

An incorrectly formatted email with unnecessary line breaks approx every 70-76 characters.

Regression:

The problem always occurs. Have tested on iPhone 3.0+, but believe the problem started on 2.2 with the "Improved formatting of wide HTML email". Have also tested on Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 accounts.

Notes:

There are no workarounds to this issue that I can find. We are unable to deploy iPhones in our company because of this bug as it gives off the impression we do not have staff that know how to properly compose emails.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Mar 14, 2010 4:58 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 15, 2010 1:58 AM in response to eric9603

Three comments;

If the best excuse anyone can come up with to not deploy the iPhone is that "it gives off the impression we do not have staff that know how to properly compose emails" then they are clearly looking for excuses. Thats about as silly as it gets. I don't envy your challenge when you have to act as if thats sensible. The majority of emails I get from BB users are much worse.

Secondly, try forcing all your Exchange users to use Plain text rather than RTF and the problem will practically go away. Email was designed from Day 1 to work in plain text only. The advent of Outlook allowed HTML and RTF formatting however as there is no common standard for this to be interpreted, the differences become apparent. Try an email from Mac Mail in HTML to Outlook - it'll look completely different depending upon how you set up your client. It doesn't matter how the originator sends an email, as its the receiving client setup that defines how its displayed. No matter how you format an email, I can choose to make it look as daft as I like in my client and my sensibilities so to speak are my own. there are people who just have text based emails as it cuts out all the corporate logo's and waffle that people send with their emails.

It is not iPhone specific - the BB does it as well.

There is nothing to fix - the problem is that the originators think that people must have their receiving clients set exactly the same way - and that won't happen IMO, unless someone introduces a common standard for Clients and with the predominance of Microsoft Outlook and their non-WWW HTML approach of IE, its pretty darn unlikely.

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Answer 2

eric9603 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2010 2:16 AM in response to Graham Outterside

Ignoring your personal feelings and comments, there absolutely is something to fix. The problem isn't a matter of forcing Exchange users to any certain format. The issue has nothing to do with Outlook and what format people send in. This issue can be reproduced by sending a brand new email, from the iPhone, and it will appear broken and chopped up with forced line breaks upon receipt. This does not happen with emails from Blackberries (we have over 300 of them deployed in our company), Android, Palm Pre or any other Active Sync device we have tested with. It also does not happen with emails originated from clients such as Mail.app, Outlook and Thunderbird. It does not happen with webmail clients such as OWA or Gmail, either. It only happens on emails originated from or replied to/forwarded from the iPhone. Clearly there is something to fix.

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Answer 3

eric9603 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2010 6:12 AM in response to eric9603

I should also mention that this is not an issue of only Outlook seeing the message as chopped and broken up with line breaks. It appears that way on any device that receives an email sent from an iPhone on an Exchange account. Even the iPhone itself sees it that way after it is sent - both in the Inbox and Sent Items.

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Answer 4

Docray1

Level 1

4 points

Mar 15, 2010 7:52 AM in response to eric9603

I have been having a similar issue with my email and texts sent from my Iphone. The texts and emails will have intermittent line breaks and the next letter typed will be capitalized. It is as though I was pressing the "return" key improperly (I am not). It started with 3.1.2 and is still an issue with 3.1.3. I had my phone replaced (for another issue) and the replacement does the same thing. Any solution or setting change to fix this would be appreciated.

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Answer 5

eric9603 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2010 8:57 AM in response to Docray1

Yep, this is exactly what I experience. It's definitely an iPhone software bug, no question about it. Here's hoping for a real fix soon!

Docray1 wrote:
I have been having a similar issue with my email and texts sent from my Iphone. The texts and emails will have intermittent line breaks and the next letter typed will be capitalized. It is as though I was pressing the "return" key improperly (I am not). It started with 3.1.2 and is still an issue with 3.1.3. I had my phone replaced (for another issue) and the replacement does the same thing. Any solution or setting change to fix this would be appreciated.

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Answer 6

Mar 15, 2010 9:10 AM in response to eric9603

If it's a reproducible software bug that needs fixing by Apple, there's nothing us end users can do here, except suggest that anyone else affected by this, submits the info to Apple at the following two pages:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

and

http://bugreporter.apple.com

(I know you've already done this eric9603, these links are for anyone else who hasn't)

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Answer 7

eric9603 Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2010 9:57 AM in response to Julian Wright

Thanks. I should have thought to include the links in my initial post.

Julian Wright wrote:
If it's a reproducible software bug that needs fixing by Apple, there's nothing us end users can do here, except suggest that anyone else affected by this, submits the info to Apple at the following two pages:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

and

http://bugreporter.apple.com

(I know you've already done this eric9603, these links are for anyone else who hasn't)

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