Seems like AOL - perhaps older clients - has trouble handling multipart text/html emails. I've got a newsletter script that sends out bulk emails with HTML and plaintext alternatives. It seems to work fine, except that some AOL users report being "unable to open" the email. Not really even knowing what they mean by that, has anyone else encountered this problem? Any ideas how to solve it?

Many thanks in advance.

---

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

In terms of your MAIL header, do you remove the text/html line in the MAIL header codes when sending to plain text recipients?

Sounds to me that those mails may still be using the text/html content type in the MAIL header even though you may have re-formatted the body of the text in plain text....

Just a thought...
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Actually I'm sending them all as multipart MIME-encoded. Turns out this is an issue with AOL clients prior to 6.0 - they don't seem to handle multipart emails properly. The only real solution, it would seem, is to send all aol.com addresses a plain text only version, which I don't want to do in this particular instance since seemingly only a minority are using legacy clients.

Alas... How I long for the day when standards are standard!

---

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

You said that you allow your members to choose what format they want the mail sent in, correct?

Couldn't you just update your member table where the mail_format column is located and update it to text for aol.com addresses? Then in your mail script, basically check for the mail format and if the member has specified HTML, then switch on the text/html content type, if not, then don't include it and send the text formatted newsletter.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

Good thought - thanks. But there actually currently isn't a place for users to select their mail format (at least not in this system). Might be worth implementing - I just fear that these particular users might not be sophisticated enough to figure out which they're supposed to pick, and it could create more problems than it solves. But I'll keep it in mind as an option if the marketing folks get too upset about the few peeps getting garbled emails.

---

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund