Outlook compatibility

[Seamus]

Just learned about MH an hour ago... exciting! I use Outlook as my primary email, but GMail for more & more lately. A lot of those I correspond with use Outlook, so I wanted to test MH-to-Outlook first. I composed a message in Gmail (plain text), added markdown, r-click to toggle, and I saw the message rendered correctly! So far so good. However, when it arrived in my Outlook inbox, all the markdown has been stripped away, and only the original plain text.  

Silly question I know, but any thoughts on what I may have done wrong? I probably would have searched a little more before posting a question, but didn't see Outlook in the "supported" list. 

Please advise.

~S

[matthew....@gmail.com]

To add to your point, my employer uses Microsoft to host our email accounts, meaning I have to use Outlook. I stick to using Outlook within Chrome (visiting outlook.com/*), so I essentially just want a Chrome extension that allows me to use LaTeX typesetting (really just the math environment) within the browser interface for Outlook. I was looking around on the internet and also just stumbled across MH about an hour ago. After installing, I've found that it doesn't do what I need. (More than just LaTeX, even the basic example provided on the post-installation screen does not work in my needed context.) I suppose I'll leave in installed for a while in hopes that an update is coming, but I can't imagine it'll stay forever if nothing changes. Here's to hoping!

[zach...@gmail.com]

I am also having this issue. I mostly just wanted to be able to easily make bulleted lists in Thunderbird however when I send an email with a bulleted list made with MH to someone using Outlook it does not show. Other basic formatting seems to work fine (haven't tried LaTeX or anything else advanced).

Would really like to know if this is something I am doing wrong or if there is a fix in the works...

[ern...@gmail.com]

Here's the situation in 2020. The current Windows desktop version of Microsoft Outlook (2013 and 2018, depending on your company) won't display syntax-highlighted, "fenced" code blocks, but other than that, emails composed with Markdown Here look fine, including inline math.

The fenced code blocks will look like this:

My workaround for that has been to use a <pre> block with each line indented four spaces, and I have a snippet expander do that work for me, so it isn't a pain. Your mileage may vary. It's not optimal, but it will display properly in Outlook for Windows.

You shouldn't have any problem with any other version of Outlook; Mac, Outlook Web, and the mobile app on iOS would display syntax-highlighted fenced code blocks just fine, because they are using modern HTMl rendering engines under the hood. (Haven't tried Android, but let's assume.) It's Outlook for Windows (which apparently still uses Word's HTML renderer, even in the 2018 version) that's the lowest common denominator you have to account for.

Hope this helps.

—Kevin

[ern...@gmail.com]

To add to that point, I should mention that Markdown Here browser extension seems to work fine inside HTML emails in Outlook Web Access (whatever the web-based version of Outlook is called these days), with the one caveat about fenced code blocks and Outlook for Windows mentioned before.

I tested with Firefox, and the Outlook Web used at my company, which I'm sure is not the latest and greatest. And when something works in Firefox, I naturally assume that probably it works better in Chrome, since that's what the cool kids use. You could theoretically extend this assumption to Edge, since it's effectively the same browser, but you may have to do a side-load of the extension, because it probably won't be in Microsoft's list of "official" Edge extensions.

So as of 2020, it seems possible to use Markdown Here in Outlook, if you're satisfied with the somewhat-degraded experience of using it in the web browser (which many people are!).

You may need to set the default message type to "HTML" in the Outlook Web settings (I'm not sure what the default it), or else switch the message type using the toolbar, as shown below.

—Kevin