Putting Tables in E-mail

Sometimes you want to put information from a table in e-mail. There is, however, a large risk that your tables will not look as you intended when received by their recipients. This web page tells you how to produce tables in e-mail which will work with most e-mailers today (August 2001).

There are basically two methods for putting tables in e-mail. One method is to use HTML tables. This will however not always work well, since many mail programs who receive HTML tables will not display them correctly.

The other alternative is to produce tables using mono-spaced fonts and space characters. Example of such a table:

 +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
 |   2001   |   2002   |   2003   |   2004   |   2005   |
 +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
 |  Margit  |   John   |   Mary   |  Eliza   |  Steven  |
 +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
 |   Red    |  Green   |   Blue   |  Purple  |  Black   |
 +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

How to produce such a table

Here are three methods of producing such a table:

1. Use an ordinary text editor, requires quite a lot of work.
2. Use a special text editor for producing such tables and for converting tables to this format, for example TableText.
3. Use Microsoft Word and the special converter "Text With Layout". This converter will convert Word tables to this format. "Text With Layout" was included as an optional extra with Word 97 and Word 98. It was not inluced with some later versions of Word, but the old converter from Word 97/98 could be installed with later versions of Word.

Of these methods, method 2 is by far the easiest.

How to send such a table

You cannot send such a table as plain text only, since some mailers will not use monospaced fonts for plain text. So you have to specify monospaced fonts using HTML commands like <PRE>,<TT> or <FONT FACE="Courier, Mono ">. Why not combine all three commands to get the largest chance of succeeding. <PRE> has the advantage that you do not have to convert all spaces to "&nbsp;" which you have to do with the other fomatting tags.

However, all mailers cannot receive HTML-formatted messages. Most mailers which can send HTML-formatted messages solves this by sending the contents of the message twice in the same message, first in plain text format and then in HTML format. Most receiving mailers will only display one of these two parts to the user.

You will then edit the text as an HTML-formatted message. The actual HTML may look something like this:

 <pre><font size="2"><tt><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono">
  +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
  |   2001   |   2002   |   2003   |   2004   |   2005   |
  +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
  |  Margit  |   John   |   Mary   |  Eliza   |  Steven  |
  +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
  |   Red    |  Green   |   Blue   |  Purple  |  Black   |
  +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

</font></tt></pre>

There is however a risk that the sending or receiving mailer will word-wrap the text. A table which was meant to look like this:

+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|   2001   |   2002   |   2003   |   2004   |   2005   |   2006   |   2007   |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|  Margit  |   John   |   Mary   |  Eliza   |   Lily   | Charles  |  Steven  |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|   Red    |  Green   |   Blue   |  Purple  |  Brown   |  Khaki   |  Black   |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

Might then instead look like this when received by some recipients:

+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----
-----+----------+
|   2001   |   2002   |   2003   |   2004   |   2005   |   
2006   |   2007   |
>+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----
-----+----------+
|  Margit  |   John   |   Mary   |  Eliza   |   Lily   | 
Charles  |  Steven  |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+-----
-----+----------+
|   Red    |  Green   |   Blue   |  Purple  |  Brown   |  
Khaki   |  Black   |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----
------+----------+

To avoid this problem, do not make the tables wider than 60 characters/line, and set the font size to <font size="2">.

Eudora Example

Here is an example how you do this with Eudora:

1. Write your message and paste the table, produced with one of the methods described above, into the message. Ensure that no line in the table is longer than 60 characters.
2. Select the table, and make the two Eudora formatting settings:
   Font->Couirer, and
   Size->Small

More about formatted e-mail.