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Why Mailchimp Text Formatting Looks Terrible

Does the text in your Mailchimp email campaign look all wrong? Perhaps the colours are inconsistent as is the text sizing and font-family? You’re not alone! Read how to solve text display problems.

Why Text Looks Wrong in Mailchimp

You add text to a text content block in Mailchimp and the preview looks great. You send out the email campaign and the text looks unprofessional and formatted in all sorts of odd ways.

Unfortunately this problem is all too common. Below are the two most common reasons for this text formatting issue.

You use a custom coded template

Mailchimp is constantly evolving. If you get an email template coded outside of Mailchimp it is coded according to standards at a point-in-time. Eventually the code in the template is likely to become outdated and this is often the cause of text not displaying correctly. Unfortunately, if this is the case, your only option is to have a new template created (or better yet, why not use one the the default Mailchimp layouts?).

Another common reason for text issues in custom HTML templates is where the developer hasn’t coded the template according to best practice.

You Copy and Paste from Word

Microsoft Word is not HTML. Email is HTML. They are very different formats and shouldn’t be mixed.

When we paste text from a Word document into a Mailchimp text content block we are adding a non-HTML format into a HTML block. It just doesn’t work (just as electricity and oil both power cars but we don’t put electricity into a fuel tank). Even if you are using the Paste from Rich Text functionality in Mailchimp you may still see issues with your text.

The best thing to do, if you paste from Microsoft Word into Mailchimp, is to paste your Word content into Notepad or another text editor and then copying that plain text and paste into Mailchimp. This will ensure that all the non-HTML code is stripped out.

Unfortunately even if you have pasted from Word in the past, and then replicated the campaign to reuse it, you may experience these formatting issues.

Found this useful? Please share:

Related

  • Top Reasons for Mailchimp Image Problems
  • Top 5 Mailchimp Beginner Mistakes
  • How to copy and paste from Word to Mailchimp

Filed Under: Marketing

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ahulani says

    August 23, 2020 at 5:51 am

    I have done none of these thing. Using Mailchimp Template, Typing my copy fresh into the text block, but my test is way over to the left and looks terrible. I can’t indent it or create a text block that is moveable. Just so frustrating! I have spoend hours and this is just a mess.

    Reply
    • Gary says

      August 24, 2020 at 10:13 am

      Hi Ahulani,
      Please clear your Browser cache (https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050) and see if that helps. If not you’ll need to contact Mailchimp directly.

      Reply
  2. Neha says

    August 31, 2021 at 12:24 am

    I use a Mailchimp template and write out most of my content and check my test emails constantly, but when it is opened on mobile devices the colors are all inverted and show lighter, clashing with the background. The only way to fix this is by changing the theme of the email but this is an inconvenience for a monthly newsletter and not every subscriber understands/ is tech savvy

    Reply
    • Gary says

      August 31, 2021 at 12:24 pm

      Hi Neha, unfortunately there is no way, besides using black and dark grey font colours, to ensure that email readers are showing text colours consistently 🙁

      Reply
  3. Phil says

    November 19, 2021 at 12:54 am

    I use one of the standard templates to create a campaign (600px wide) consiting of images and text boxes, when doing email tests, everything looks as it should on web based email etc…but as soon as it his Outlook client the test/boxed text shows as full width, how do I stop that happening?

    Reply

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