Before you start ensure your email is set to be exactly 600px wide in Knak. This is required to ensure your email is formatted correctly when sending with Outlook.

It is generally not recommended to send HTML emails from Outlook due to the limitations with rendering. That being said, a lot of our clients like to send emails from individual user's Outlook accounts. We can see the benefit of this and have created download for Outlook functionality to optimize Knak emails for this process.

Please note that the emails will render a lot more consistently with better responsive behavior when using the regular download or sync functionality in Knak to send from Marketo, Eloqua or Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

To enable download for Outlook in your account, reach out to your CSM or our Support team and we can turn on the feature.

Once the feature is enabled you will be able to download for Outlook from the within the email builder by clicking on the Publish menu.

Go to Publish → Downloads → Download HTML for Outlook

Once your file downloads, open it in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge

From here you just need to copy everything in the browser window. Click somewhere on the body of the page and Select All (press Ctrl+A for Windows or Cmd+A for Mac). Right click and select Copy, or press Ctrl+C for Windows or Cmd+C for Mac to copy everything:

Create a new email and click into the body area of the email and paste (right-click and select Paste, or use Ctrl+V on Windows or Cmd+V on Mac).

a small paste options window will immediately appear at the bottom right.

Click this and choose the the Keep Source Formatting option.

A small paste options window will immediately appear at the bottom left.

Click this and select the Keep Source Formatting option.

**Note

In both Classic and New Outlook there is also a paste icon with an arrow in the menu bar of the compose window. Click the downward arrow and select the Set default paste. From here you can configure Outlook to always paste using the “Keep Source Formatting” option so that you don’t need to choose it each time.

Your email is ready to send! Add your recipient and subject line, and send your email.

Please note, there are some limitations to using the Outlook download:

Email Width

Emails sent with Outlook should be exactly 600px wide. Other widths are not supported and may have display issues.

Background Images

These are not supported in the Outlook Download. If you are using a section with text over a background, we recommend creating a flat image file with the text embedded in it, and inserting that into your email instead. You can do this in Knak by inserting the background image as a regular image, then click “Edit” under the image’s URL in the sidebar. In the popup window, click the left-hand tab for “Text” and click “Add Text”.

Mobile responsive options

The Outlook download does not support media queries. That means mobile recipients will see the same version of the email as desktop viewers.

Knak editing elements relating to mobile devices like "Hide on mobile" and "Do not stack on mobile" also won't function when sent via the Outlook download.

Round buttons

Outlook does not support sending rounded buttons. If you use a rounded button is will display as square when sent from Outlook.

Section Color

Outlook download not support a full width section color, but you can use an email body background color instead.

Reverse column order

The reverse column option does not work when sending from Outlook and causes alignment issues.

Not compatible with Outlook.com

Please use a desktop version of Outlook to send your emails as Outlook.com does not support this process.

Adding HTML file as an Attachment

If you are sending the Outlook HTML as an attachment and you are seeing odd characters in the download after sending, please reach out to Knak Support to add the possibility of Downloading an Outlook Attachment file.

New Outlook is still being developed and it is changing every day. For best results using New Outlook we recommend the following:

Simple designs

Keep designs very simple for best results.

Keep your content in one Knak Section

There is a known issue with Sections having a gap between them when sent from New Outlook, as shown below.

To avoid this, stick to a single section and use Nested Sections within it to create your desired layout. Alternatively you can simply avoid Content background colors and use a single Body background color, so that the gaps will not be visible.

Need more help? Contact support via live chat within Knak using the chat bubble in the bottom right corner or email support@knak.com