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Sue
Australia
19 Posts |
 Posted - Nov 20 2008 : 22:00:53
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Our first newsletter mail out using MailList King was completed this morning, and worked beautifully overall .. EXCEPT for the recipients (approx 25% of our mailing list) who receive their issues as an html email message. (Others receive a text notification, with a link to the newsletter online.)
Although the test emails I sent to myself worked without a problem, rendering the newsletter perfectly in my email program, the group mailouts I did delivered a corrupted version of the newsletter - looking a bit like a dog's breakfast on the right hand side! I have no idea what the problem might be, and would appreciate any advice or help anyone can offer!
Here is more info to show you what the problem is:
1) The actual newsletter online (source code view will reveal the html code I've used): http://www.bjseminars.com.au/starlink/StarlinkExtraNov08.html
2) A temporary directory on our server where I've uploaded three screen captures. All three show how the newsletter was actually rendered in my email program. The 'correct' version was after my test mailing (to myself and a spam check service) and the 'corrupt' versions were after the group mailing. http://www.bjseminars.com.au/temp2/
I did read through the forums and found a handful of messages about htm formatting. But most seemed to be related to encoding - which is set to "Automatic" in my Message Sending Tolbar and is not the problem here.
Also, in my case, the formatting is apparently preserved without a problem when sending to only one or two recipients - only becomes corrupted when I do the bulk mailings.
I'll look forward to any advice anyone can offer. :-)
Cheers
Sue
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xequte
7042 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 14:05:15
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Hi Sue
Can you please send the same message to me from MLK (to specify a custom recipient click the "To" button and then the third option to manually specify an email address. In the box enter test@xequte.com).
Nigel
Xequte Software
www.xequte.com
nigel@xequte.com
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Sue
Australia
19 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 16:36:10
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Hi Nigel
Done.  I have actually sent two test emails. The first one was edited in Mail List King (as I had done for those I sent to our newsletter recipients). The second used the original html newsletter exactly as created, with no further editing in MailList King.
I also included my own alternative email address in the "To" field, so I could view results. Both messages were corrupted - the second just as badly as the first. 
I create the newsletter using a text editor, hand coding the htm tags etc. This is then uploaded to our website (as you saw in my first post) and the htm copy dropped (or imported) into my email program for sending. I've used three programs so far to do this - my default email program (called !ntellect, by Chaos Software), GroupMail Pro and now MailList King. Only MailList King has produced this weird output, but hopefully it will be a fixable quirk - possibly something in the htm code that I need to do or not do.
I played around with removing some headers (eg keyword or description meta tags, which were in one version) at the top of the email. But although it works beautifully when sending to one person, as soon as I try personalising and sending to more than one person, with the first name greeting at the top, the message is corrupted again - and with a different part of the newsletter gone haywire each time. On one occasion the whole second item (the one called "Another Birthday) was in Times New Roman font .. on a GREEN background! And none of my coding anywhere required a green color for the background of anything. Weird!!
I'll finally add that, although I do the newsletters by hand in a text editor, I am completely self-taught with htm and css, so am by no means an expert! Far from it!  The template I use for our newsletters was also downloaded from somewhere several years back now - I can't remember where. I've updated it several times to change layout or content elements etc., so it's certainly possible I've messed up something in the coding somewhere. 
But so far, until trying to send the newsletters through MaiList King, I've had none of the really bizarre results with the sent newsletters that I've encountered with this one. So I am completely flummoxed! I hope you can make some sense of the messages I've sent through to you, and advise me on what on earth I need to do so I can use MailList King successfully for our newsletters.
Cheers
Sue
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xequte
7042 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 18:10:26
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Thanks Sue, they came through as corrupted. Unfortunately I was unable to reproduce the failure on our test machine so please tell me:
- What method do you use to load/paste your HTML into MLK
- What sending method do you have specified under View > Options, Sending
- If you click the Preview button on the sending toolbar does it look correct there?
Nigel
Xequte Software
www.xequte.com
nigel@xequte.com
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Sue
Australia
19 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 18:24:52
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Hi Nigel
Thank you for such a fast response.
In answer to your questions:
1) To load/paste the html I go to File > Open (I've also used "Open Recent")
2) Sending method is "Multi-Threaded SMTP (via your ISP's mail server)" and I've selected the radio button to send a separate message to each email address. (Which I assume is required in order to personalise each message anyway?)
3) Yes, it does look ok in the preview button - I always do check that (in whatever email program I'm using) before sending. (It also looks fine from the receiving end if I send only to one recipient, as I test each email that way too, by sending it to myself)
Thank you also for your other email with the link for an update - I'll download that file and install it, then will test another send, using two different recipient addresses of my own and let you know what happens.
Warm regards, Sue |
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Sue
Australia
19 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 18:47:45
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Dear Nigel
Just did a test send with the new version of the program installed - still no luck.
In the last test I did I used six email addresses - four different email addresses Chris and I use for different purposes on our domain, and the 'generic' email address each of us has from from our ISPs. And the very weird thing was that ONE of those messages to one of my own email addresses came through perfectly - the other five were all corrupted. It happened to be the last address I'd added to the list - although I'm not sure whether or not that is relevant.
Let me know if there's further info you need from me. I realise I've thrown you a bit of a curler with this problem ... ... but I do hope a solution is possible. |
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xequte
7042 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 19:05:27
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Hi Sue
Hmmm, still not seeing when trying to mimic your method.
Can you please try disabling the option of sending with multiple connections. Some mail servers can't handle simultaneous connections.
Nigel
Xequte Software
www.xequte.com
nigel@xequte.com
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Sue
Australia
19 Posts |
Posted - Nov 23 2008 : 19:50:31
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Dear Nigel
You're a gem!! 
Disabling the multiple connections seems to have done the trick. I just did another test send to six email addresses, and all came through without a problem.
I'll be sending our other newsletter out to multiple recipients tomorrow - so will test that as well before sending. But it looks as though the problem is solved by making this change to the sending process. Great!
I do know I used multiple connections in GroupMail - but only three. I may try testing MailList King with only three connections instead. However, as our ISP restricts sending to no more than 200 per hour anyway, multiple connections are probably not necessary. The send process will be fast enough without that, given the restriction in number.
Besides, in GroupMail you can't set the max per hour - you have to set the program to pause for a certain amount of time after X number of messages. Whereas in MailList King that process is automatically handled by the program if you set the max number per hour. An excellent feature, I reckon.
One final note ... through all the process if testing and checking to solve this problem, I also realised there were a few issues in my lack of care with some of the html tags. E.g a missing <p> or </p> in a couple of places made MailList King add <div> tags (instead of <p> tags) when I tried to edit the newsletter in the WYSIWYG editor by adding the "Dear" parag at the top. So I asssume that was another complicating factor. One for which I take full responsibility.
However, even after fixing those errors in my coding, one of the previous tests still produced the scrambled output - so it looks as though the multiple connections issue was the main problem.
Once again, thank you so much for your help and fast response - it is much appreciated!
Warmly
Sue
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Please help! Corrupted HTML messages
