Clipped content and distorted images in Gmail and Outlook

Prevent email content from being hidden in Gmail and keep images from being distorted in Outlook

Different email clients display content differently, which can affect how your email appears if it exceeds a certain size limit. By being mindful of your message length and image sizes, you can prevent clipped content and distorted images in Gmail and Outlook.

• Clipped content in Gmail
• Distorted images in Outlook

Design tip: To see how your email will display in Gmail and the other top email clients, so you can catch design issues before sending, try using Inbox Preview.

Clipped content in Gmail

When your email message exceeds 102KB or is too content-heavy, Gmail clips it and makes the reader click a "View entire message" link to read the rest of your email.


 

To decrease the chance that part of your email appears hidden:

• Be concise - Write more concise and targeted emails that focus on a few key points or a specific call-to-action. Shorter emails not only avoid clipping but also improve open rates.
• Use links - Use a "Read More" block to point to a website where your reader can get in-depth information, or create your own "Read More" text link.
• Close gaps - Remove unnecessary spaces or line breaks that add too much length to your email.
• Paste plain text - When you copy content from a document or webpage, it may include extra formatting and style code that increases the size of your email when you paste it into your template. Use Ctrl+Shift+V (for PC) or Options+Shift+Command+V (for Mac) to paste text without styles and strip out the extra code.

Message clipping can also occur when the Conversation view is enabled in Gmail. Multiple messages with the same subject line (both received and replies) are grouped into a single thread, and Gmail collapses duplicate emails and clips duplicate content, so you have to click to expand them. If you send lots of test emails to a Gmail address, change the subject line or disable the Conversation view to prevent clipping.

For more information about enabling or disabling Gmail's conversation view, please see Google's support.

Distorted images in Outlook

Outlook uses an engine that has a 1728-pixel height limit for images displayed in an email.  If an image is larger than 1728 pixels high, Outlook will manipulate the image - either by cropping the extra pixels from the top or bottom of the image, condensing it, or omitting the image entirely.


 

To decrease the chance your image will be distorted:

• Avoid image-only emails - Always avoid using a single image as your entire email; this has the added benefit of keeping your email out of the spam folder, too! 
• Decrease the image size - Determine your image's size, then optimize the image before uploading it to your Library. You can also resize images after you insert them into your email campaign. 
• Focus on the subject - Crop your images to get rid of unnecessary content. You can always link the image to the full version.
• Check the DPI settings - If a contact is seeing distorted images when viewing your email, have them check the DPI setting on their computer. Choosing a display appearance of "Smaller" or "100%" yields the best results.

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