I’m having trouble with email styling in Gmail. I created an HTML email with CSS formatting and when I send it to Gmail addresses, all the styling gets stripped out. The email looks plain with no formatting at all.
The weird thing is that the same email displays perfectly fine in other email clients like Outlook and Apple Mail. All my CSS styles show up correctly there. It seems like Gmail is specifically blocking or removing the CSS code.
I’ve tried different approaches but nothing works for Gmail. The styles include basic things like colors, fonts, and layout formatting. Has anyone experienced this problem before? What’s the best way to make CSS work properly in Gmail? Are there specific CSS rules or methods that Gmail accepts?
I need to get this working because many of my recipients use Gmail as their primary email client.
for sure, gmail can be tough. inline styles will def help. avoid @media queries; they just don’t play nice. old school table layouts are really ur best bet to keep things looking good!
Gmail’s gotten way more restrictive with email CSS over the years. CSS reset techniques for email clients helped me a ton - Gmail loves to slap on its own default styles that’ll override yours, so you’ve got to be really explicit with your declarations. Also, test the web interface separately from the mobile app since they handle CSS completely differently. The mobile app’s usually more forgiving. Skip CSS shorthand properties too - they’ll break things. Instead of margin: 10px 0, write margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px separately. Tools like Litmus or Email on Acid will save you hours by showing exactly how your email looks across different Gmail versions before you hit send.
Gmail’s filtering can be quite challenging, as it strips external styles and most CSS defined in the <head> section. From my experience, the key is to use inline styling for every element. For instance, instead of grouping your styles in a block, you should apply them directly, like this: <p style="color: #333333; font-size: 14px;"> for each element. Additionally, it’s wise to avoid newer CSS properties and stick to basics such as color, font-size, background-color, and simple margins. Using tables instead of divs tends to yield better results in Gmail. I’ve grappled with this issue for quite some time, and these steps have significantly improved my email appearances.