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MailChimp formatting stripped

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  • Last reply by steve.sjbc

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After a recent update to Thunderbird (on Windows 10) it has started rendering messages incorrectly. It seems to override HTML settings in emails and defaults everything to a standard colour scheme. This is especially noticeable when testing MailChimp emails and receiving styled email newsletters from other companies. For example, I created a MailChimp campaign with a dark background and light text with highlights and buttons in a different colour. This is now all being stripped and placed onto a white background with black text. Some elements like social shares (which were white) are now completely hidden too. I am also seeing issues with the way my email signature is displaying, as it had specific colours attributed to certain HTML (email friendly) elements. This was NOT an issue before the recent updates, so is there a way to simply view emails as they are intended (for both reading and composing)?

After a recent update to Thunderbird (on Windows 10) it has started rendering messages incorrectly. It seems to override HTML settings in emails and defaults everything to a standard colour scheme. This is especially noticeable when testing MailChimp emails and receiving styled email newsletters from other companies. For example, I created a MailChimp campaign with a dark background and light text with highlights and buttons in a different colour. This is now all being stripped and placed onto a white background with black text. Some elements like social shares (which were white) are now completely hidden too. I am also seeing issues with the way my email signature is displaying, as it had specific colours attributed to certain HTML (email friendly) elements. This was NOT an issue before the recent updates, so is there a way to simply view emails as they are intended (for both reading and composing)?

Chosen solution

Thanks for linking to that article Stans, I eventually managed to find a solution. You need to go into General options, select Colours under Language & Appearance. Then make sure to deselect, use system colours and chose 'Never' under Override the colours... N.B this only works for emails with specific formatting applied (e.g. MailChimp emails with definite colours applied to them.) I also tried the chosen solution in the article Stans shared (using Config Editor), but this did not solve the issues I was having. It only changed the colour of the interface but did nothing for the incorrect formatting of emails being read in my inbox. You need to use that solution along with what I listed above, to get all emails to display correctly. I am quite frustrated that even when I try to downgrade to get a stable working version of Thunderbird it forces me to recreate all my email accounts and settings. I will now be turning off auto-updates, as if you try to revert to a previous version of thunderbird you have to setup all your email accounts again!

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Chosen Solution

Thanks for linking to that article Stans, I eventually managed to find a solution. You need to go into General options, select Colours under Language & Appearance. Then make sure to deselect, use system colours and chose 'Never' under Override the colours... N.B this only works for emails with specific formatting applied (e.g. MailChimp emails with definite colours applied to them.) I also tried the chosen solution in the article Stans shared (using Config Editor), but this did not solve the issues I was having. It only changed the colour of the interface but did nothing for the incorrect formatting of emails being read in my inbox. You need to use that solution along with what I listed above, to get all emails to display correctly. I am quite frustrated that even when I try to downgrade to get a stable working version of Thunderbird it forces me to recreate all my email accounts and settings. I will now be turning off auto-updates, as if you try to revert to a previous version of thunderbird you have to setup all your email accounts again!