Can we retain the style of HTML email upon forwarding an email back and forth from different email clients and devices?

Question

Is it possible to control the HTML email forwarding? for example if I receive an HTML email on my gmail chrome desktop and forward that email to my native mail app on iPhone then is it possible to retain the actual style of email upon as many forwards as needed?

Answer 1

The short answer is "No".

The long answer is that due to each email client using a different pre-processor for receipt of all incoming emails & each client usually also manipulating and editing your code prior to sending the email, you really cannot do anything to control styling/display outside initial send.

For example, Gmail removes the style sheet, so when forwarded, your email will no longer contain anything in the style tag. We also have many tags or styles that are not accepted or are changed (e.g. Outlook usually changes DIV to P) from client to client.

Then we bring in that each client has its own 'default' styles, which means that even if you don't declare any styles on your email, the display will change from client to client.

Below are great references on "how email works" from Click Z: https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2411041/how-email-works-part-one-the-story-of-send

https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2415472/how-email-works-part-two

https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2419476/how-email-works-part-three-anatomy-of-an-email

https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2423769/how-email-works-part-four-measurement-and-tracking

Insight into Preprocessors by Litmus: https://litmus.com/blog/webmail-rendering-explained-why-preprocessors-are-the-enemy