Purpose of using conditional comment <!--[if gte mso 9]>

Question

Can anyone tell me, why the conditional comment is used?

Will it affect the IE browsers below version 9 ?

Answer 1

The code sandwiched between the opening and closing tags here will only affect Microsoft Outlook 9 or later clients. Note that because it says mso rather than IE, it does not affect Internet Explorer.

A quick breakdown of Outlook versions:

• Outlook 2000 - Version 9
• Outlook 2002 - Version 10
• Outlook 2003 - Version 11
• Outlook 2007 - Version 12
• Outlook 2010 - Version 14
• Outlook 2013 - Version 15

For a more detailed explanation, you can see this helpful page from Mailchimp