CSS font stack substitution issues in Outlook when using Google Webfonts

Question

Using Google Webfonts in an HTML email I ran into font substitution issues in Outlook (2007,2010, etc.) that didn't occur prior to incorporating webfonts.It ignores the font stacks and goes right to Times.

This happens despite using inline fallback font stacks.

I've noticed similar issues that have been posted here before, but only as a general question, not tied to the use of webfonts. Previously all of the font fallbacks worked correctly. I'm using Litmus to conduct the email testing.

Does anyone know why this might be happening?

Link to Litmus: https://litmus.com/pub/53a33c7/screenshots

Originally linked fonts in CSS like so:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Arvo|Droid+Serif:400,700,400italic,700italic|Roboto:300' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

I also tried using @font-face and self hosted files after seeing a possible solution in another answer, but it didn't work (I updated class names too):

Except from font-face attempted workaround:

<!--[if !mso]><!--> 

@font-face {
    font-family: 'droid_serif';
    src: url('http://www.suissamesser.com/emails/rsdsa/DroidSerif-webfont.eot');
    src: url('http://www.suissamesser.com/emails/rsdsa/DroidSerif-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('http://www.suissamesser.com/emails/rsdsa/DroidSerif-webfont.svg#droid_serif') format('svg'),  
         url('http://www.suissamesser.com/emails/rsdsa/DroidSerif-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('http://www.suissamesser.com/emails/rsdsa/DroidSerif-webfont.ttf') format('truetype');

    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;

}
<!--<![endif]-->

Outlook specific override CSS seems to work, but there are priority issues. I don't believe Outlook recognizes the !important declaration so I've been working towards more specific selections. However, I still don't understand why this is happening and if there is a simpler fix.

Outlook Font Override Excerpt:

    <!--[if gte mso 9]>
    <style>
        /* Target Outlook 2007 and 2010 */

            h1 { font-family: 'Georgia',serif !important; font-weight:normal; }
            h1 a { font-family: 'Georgia',serif !important; font-weight:normal; }
            h2 { font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight:normal; }
            h3 { font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
            .cover,img.cover,a.cover {
                display: block;
                visibility: visible;

                td { font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',arial, helvetica, sans-serif; } 

                .droid { font-family: 'Georgia', serif; }
}
    </style>
    <![endif]-->

Example of problematic code:

<td height="30" colspan="3" align="left" valign="middle" class="featured">
    <h2 style="text-align: left; padding: 0; margin: 0; color: #00799f; font-family: 'Roboto',arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 21px; font-weight: 100; background: none; border-bottom: 1px solid #b1d6e2; text-decoration: none; line-height: 36px; mso-line-height-rule: exactly;">cover story</h2>
</td>

UPDATE:

I've tried the suggestion in the answers to put the webfont import code inside conditional tags that exclude Outlook to no avail.

<!--[if !mso]><!-- -->
@import url(http://www.example.css);
<!--<![endif]-->

AND

<!--[if !mso]><!-- -->
@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oxygen);
<!--<![endif]-->

UPDATE II (SOLUTION):

With all the help offered it's clear a number of seemingly minor issue all could cause this problem. The font-face method seems to be preferable to @import. Having the webfont name not be the same as the local font can cause the same issue, but that's just not what was happening with this particular email.

I had tried conditional code early on to hide the webfont import code from Outlook <!--[if !mso]><!--> altogether.

The problem was I did this within a CSS style tag in the head section. Simply placing this code in its own style tag as shown below made the difference.

I confirmed it's working as I was able to remove the extra workaround CSS code I had used to detect for version of Outlook 2007 and greater to restore h1, h2 values to the standard font stack.

<!--[if !mso]><!-->
<style type="text/css">
@font-face {
    font-family: 'oxygenlight';
    src: url('http://www----/fonts/oxygen-light-webfont.eot');
    src: url('http://www.----/fonts/oxygen-light-webfont.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),
         url('http://www.-----/fonts/oxygen-light-webfont.woff') format('woff'),
         url('http://www.-----/fonts/oxygen-light-webfont.ttf') format('truetype'),
         url('http://www.-----/fonts/oxygen-light-webfont.svg#oxygenlightlight') format('svg');
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}
</style>
<!--<![endif]-->

Answer 1

UPDATE: Here is a technique to call webfonts with fallback to the font stack in all versions of Outlook that break

Try declaring your webfont if NOT Outlook instead. The webfont might be problematic for Outlook, so not calling it at all might work. Worth a try...

Edit:

This issue has occured before with Outlook breaking when your first declared font is in quotes. This seems like an Outlook bug/limitation that is unavoidable unfortunately.

Answer 2

To get Outlook to use your font-stack instead of substituting your web-font with whatever font Outlook chooses add add a conditional comment which will only be read by Outlook to assign your font-stack backup fonts. Define your web-font but do not define it in the conditional comment so Outlook will ignore the web-font, go straight for it's conditional comment and just display Arial.

<style>
        @import url('http://www.yourdomain.com/webfont.css');
</style>

    <!--[if gte mso 9]>
        <style>
            .webfontsubstitute { font-family: arial, sans-serif; }
        </style>
    <![endif]-->

</head>
<body>

    <a href="#" target="_blank" style="font-family:superwebfont,arial,sans-serif;">
    <span class="webfontsubstitute">WEB FONT STYLED TEXT HERE</span></a>

Answer 3

I've been having this problem too and have just found quite a simple fix. Once you've imported your web font, @media screen { } can be used to single out clients which support media queries, and these happen to be the ones which support web fonts. Thus, simply specifying the font-family declaration inside and outside of this selector lets you hide specific fonts from email clients such as Outlook, so your next appropriate fallback font will be displayed, and your web font will appear nicely in clients that support it.

@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300);

.h1 { font-family: 'Arial', 'Helvetica', sans-serif }

@media screen {
    .h1 {
        font-family: Open Sans, 'Arial', 'Helvetica', sans-serif
    }
}

Incidentally, Campaign Monitor suggests that @import is better than @font-face in emails in general.