Hey folks, I’m having a bit of trouble with GMail and my HTML emails. I send out a bunch of them for work, but GMail’s being a pain. When there are multiple emails with the same subject, it hides some of the content and puts in this ‘…’ thing to show ‘trimmed content’. It’s messing up my formatting big time!
I can’t really change the subject line for each email. Is there any way to stop GMail from doing this? It’s driving me nuts!
Oh, and just to be clear, I’m sending these emails through a PHP script using Amazon SES. That’s why I’m asking here instead of a regular email forum. Any ideas would be super helpful! Thanks!
yo, i’ve run into the same problem. try inserting a hidden random value, like so:
<?php echo rand(); ?>
this fool’s gmail into thinkin its new. hope that works for ya!
As someone who’s dealt with this Gmail quirk extensively, I’ve found a reliable solution that doesn’t involve changing subject lines or messing with hidden elements. It’s all about tweaking the email headers.
Try adding a unique ‘Message-ID’ header to each email you send. In your PHP script, you can generate this like so:
$messageId = ‘<’ + time() + ‘.’ + mt_rand() + ‘@yourdomain.com>’;
$headers = 'Message-ID: ’ + $messageId;
When sending through Amazon SES, make sure to include this custom header. Gmail uses the Message-ID to differentiate between emails, even if the content is similar.
This approach has worked wonders for me, maintaining the integrity of my HTML emails without any visible changes to the recipient. It’s a clean, behind-the-scenes fix that should solve your formatting woes.
I’ve encountered this issue before, and it can be frustrating. One workaround I’ve found effective is to add a unique identifier to the email’s content, preferably near the top. This could be a timestamp, a random string, or even a counter. Gmail uses content similarity to determine what to collapse, so introducing a unique element can help prevent this.
In your PHP script, you could generate this unique identifier and insert it into your HTML email, perhaps as a hidden div or a comment. Something like:
This approach doesn’t require changing the subject line and should help Gmail recognize each email as distinct, even with identical subjects. It’s not foolproof, but it’s significantly improved the situation for me when dealing with similar emails.