Have you noticed that the emails you receive in Outlook appear different from how they looked in the email builder? If so, it’s possible that your Outlook version has been updated to include Microsoft’s new Advanced Typography features.

This change is currently only affecting users on Outlook Classic for Windows.

What is the change?
Essentially this new update applies text formatting algorithms to any bodies of text in emails you receive in Outlook, with particular emphasis in text alignment, word spacing and hyphenation.

The more specific changes to text you may notice include making all left aligned text fully justified instead and automatically adding hyphenations to words.

It’s worth noting that this new algorithm works on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. In other words, some bodies of text may be affected while others are not.

What was the need for change?
The thought behind this update is to make email text resemble that of a physically printed book. Microsoft have said:

“Full justification is one of the hallmarks of fine typography, and is present in most professional books, magazines, and editorial design. Aligning the text on both the right and left creates a clear box of the text, which in turn reinforces the graphic organization and underlying structure of the page.”

These changes do not actually make any changes to the HTML or CSS behind your email – it only applies to the read only version of your email in the Outlook Reading Pane. You can see this in action when you reply or forward to an email as it will return to the previous state.

When was the change made?
The first attempt at releasing this feature was made back in 2023. However, this release experienced quite widespread backlash and so it was rolled back. Microsoft then began slowly rolling this feature out again in April 2024.

Who is affected?
Following the second release of this feature in April 2024, Microsoft said: “The next step is that the feature is now being enabled by default starting with Current Channel Version 2403 (Build 17410.20000).”

What this means is that this feature will be enabled by default in your version of Outlook Classic for Windows, if you’re on the Current Channel and you are on version 2403 or later.

Turning this feature off
Following the initial backlash after this features first release, Microsoft also added an opt out feature. To access these settings in your Outlook, navigate to File 🡢 Options 🡢 Mail 🡢 Editor Options 🡢 Advanced 🡢 Advanced Typography.

Check the Disable Advanced Typography for outgoing mail checkbox. You can also individually turn off the smart justification or hyphenation here if you’d prefer to do this rather than disable both.

Although it’s worth noting, in some versions of Outlook, these options have been since removed. The only further workaround is to add in additional code in your emails to overwrite these changes. As standard and to help our clients, we add this code to all drag and drop emails launched from our platform. However, in some versions of Outlook this code is also ignored.

Please get in touch at info@campaignmaster.co.uk if you need help with your email marketing.