Email loses table formatting using Sharepoint

Question

Currently I am creating a form for my team in which whenever I created a table inside the form, the formatting always loses out when its emailed out using the workflow. It looks fine inside sharepoint.

Would you know why this is happening and if this is possible to rectify? I have tried playing from with the html codes and setting the cellspacing/cellpadding to 0 but to no avail.

This is created in sharepoint 2007 and is emailed to Outlook 2010

Below is the code which i copied from the form

<DIV class=ExternalClassF144FCAB36964753AEEFDEB7F4D47C9B>
<DIV></DIV>
<TABLE style="DISPLAY: inline; BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse; FONT-SIZE: 1em" border=1  cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Log</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Issue Description</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>10/10/10 10:10 AM</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells>
<DIV>Critical Issue Reported</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>10/10/10 10:10 AM</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: top" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Critical Issue Reported</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>10/10/10 10:10 AM</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Critical Isssue Reported</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>10/10/10 10:10 AM</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Critical Issue Reported</DIV></TD></TR>
<TR>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>10/10/10 10:10 AM</DIV></TD>
<TD style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: middle" class=ms-rtetablecells;>
<DIV>Critical Issue Reported</DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></DIV>

Here is the image of what i get : http://picpaste.com/format-TTKUod2W.JPG

Answer 1

A tip I can give you when working with HTML in SharePoint Designer workflows is to get rid of all white space in the email body. If not, emails can be delivered very unappealing. So as bad of a practice as it is in normal web terms, pack the code tightly together once you got it drafted and see if that helps you here.

Answer 2

In the workflows, when sending html alerts out, I always found that white spacing caused the email to lose its format - no idea why. So I created an email template with no white space which always seems to work in whatever email client is being used.

Answer 3

I would say it's the HTML that is the problem. No one has pointed out that it does not follow any HTML standard. This will give your problems in newer Microsoft products that is starting to follow standards more and more.

I would say start inserting " in all the places where it is missing and remove the div elements inside the td's. Div are block elements, block elements will put the next element on a new line.