eM Client: completely dysfunctional, fatal bugs

Frequently Asked Questions
1

Sorry for the negative tone, but inherent problems in eM Client make this tool unacceptable for any serious user. The most important part of an email client is the possibility to PROFESSIONALLY SEND EMAILS. However, as it is now, this possibility is hindered severely: one cannot send professional emails simply because the html rendered is severely flawed.

In other words (and in addition to my previous bug reports) eM Client may show your emails not in the way the recipient is going to see them; and moreover (this I discovered now–hence the new post): even if you wrote and sent your email through Gmail web client, on eM Client you may see it in a different, incorrect way (i.e., not as the recipient is going to see it).

These persistent bugs make, in my opinion, eM Client an unacceptable tool for any serious user.

2

Sorry to disappoint you, but as a serious user,  i am confident. Can you give a little more detailed information?

3

Hello Frank,

you are confident in what?

Further, perhaps you are not aware of this problem, namely, the fact that your recipients see your emails in a different (formatted in an odd way) than the way you think you sent the emails. Hence, you are simply unaware that your recipients consider you unprofessional.

More Details :
I repeat my previous bug reports that got confirmed by other users as well (https://forum.emclient.com/emclient/topics/bug-oddly-formatted-text-doesnt-show-as-formatted?rfm=1&a…)

When writing an email, if I paste formatted text (that I copied, say, from another application) into the emClient email window, it appears un-formatted, though in effect it retains its formatting (it just doesn’t show them correctly!). So when I send the email I wrote, things would appear to the recipient most of the times as oddly formatted email, and specifically with varying font sizes.

And User Andy has confirmed this unacceptable bug:

I would add that, even if you use Shift-Ctrl-V to “Paste as text”, the formatting can still get screwy.

In fact, eM Client has a tendency to add many extraneous HTML DIV tags in seemingly arbitrary spots, so you can never be sure what your email is really going to look like, unless you look under Menu:Edit:Edit Source to see the actual HTML that eM Client has generated.

Oftentimes, the HTML doesn’t match what is being displayed in the Compose window.

Moreover, when you look at the HTML of your message once it has been received on the other side (for example, if I send a message from eM Client to another Gmail address I own, and read the email in the Gmail web interface), then the received HTML can also differ from the HTML that eM Client displayed in its Edit Source window. This is especially true for signatures, and eM Client seems to randomly insert HTML DIV tags for non-existent HTML styles (styles that aren’t defined elsewhere).

I think someone on the dev team needs to audit the application code that generates and displays the HTML. My guess is that there’s a bunch of legacy code in there that isn’t well understood by the current developers.

See here as well: https://forum.emclient.com/emclient/topics/bug-problem-mail-format-doesnt-take-effect

4

Hi Gary,

thank you for additional information. Now i understand. It depends on using html in emails as a professional. For i use only text and some links in my business-emails, there is not much to get wrong, and i really may not be aware of this.

But i understand the problem, and it surprises me a lot. Years ago i turned my back an outlook because of its special html-behaviour (when i used a lot of html) and even if you were not using html, but a form of rich text, and now em-client does the same. Your conclusions seem to be right. Hopefully the developers read this. Did you get an answer in the professional support? They reply a bit faster there, i think. 

5

Thanks Frank. I don’t know where/who to contact in the professional support. Do you have the link/address for the professional support?

6

Under “Support” on the main page there is “Pro support”. 
Or the direct way: https://support.emclient.com/
It is driven by Help Desk Software by Kayako, so you have to enter with your pro-account, that cannot merged with the account in the free forum (driven by getsatisfaction.com).

7

Thanks. I don’t have a Pro version. Can I still contact them in that case?

8

No, you need Pro-credentials for that. I just posted your second message “More Details” there. Let’s see.

9

Hi Gary,

this is the answer i got:

"
Hello Frank,

Please try to install our latest build(http://www.emclient.com/dist/v7.1.30440/setup.msi) and let me know if you still have issues with formatting.
I will report this issue to our developers if latest 7.1 is affected and I’ll need example of such email in .eml format.

Kind regards,

Anthony Cooper
eM Client Support
"

So, can you give an example of misformed html? I would like to try it myself.

10

I would love to see some examples of this.  My experience has been that it is acceptable.  I have had years of emails looking different on mac clients though.  I have customers whose professionally designed email templates all show up as attachments, even on outlook!

11

dma2112,

I’ve been doggedly sticking with v6.xxxx (most recent 6) due to the ton bad reports on 7.  But, 6 is giving me fits too with a variety of issues, while I still can send/read email, it’s just annoying the heck out me.

Do you recommend I move to 7 given all the bad reports? If I do, I assume if I do a full backup first I can always go back, right?

12

Ejp, it is my recommendation not to upgrade to v7.
I have worked with emclient v6 and it was fine. I just upgraded for the conversation view.
This conversation view is excellent. However, as of now eMClient in dysfunctional from the perspective of anyone who cares to being perceived as a professional user. Using v7 you will be sending ludicrous looking emails, without even knowing how messy your emails are. Stay away.

– Gary

13

Thanks.
I am already using the latest version you linked. The bug persists.

14

Hi Gary,

i tried it with the newest build, everything looks fine. Do you have an example?

15

First of all, having used email since it’s general use back in the early 90’s, there has always been differences between how received emails are displayed depending on the receiving and sending client (anybody ever used Lotus Notes???, they would look horrible when received from other Notes users).  Therefore, in my mind, minor differences are generally to be accepted and I have always ignored them.  That being said, I see no such issues with eM Client.  I sent several emails to myself (separate account, Mail for Windows) formatted, unformatted and they all looked perfect on the other end.

Also, I would disagree with Gary’s comments about upgrading to version 7(.1).  I find it to be significantly better and faster than 6 with a way better feature set.  Also to ejp, the upgrade from 6 to 7.x does not affect your 6.x data files, so if you want to go back to 6.x, simply uninstall 7.x and reinstall 6.x and all should be good.

16

As a follow-up to my above post, I looked at the same emails using the gmail web interface rather than another email client.  In fact, the web client did display the email formatting slightly different-- it appeared it was all unformatted text, even if it was formatted.  Therefore, I would conclude that the web client is actually displaying the content incorrectly , not eM Client sending the incorrect formats.

17

I saw the unwanted and unexpected font-size changes first on Gmail and thought: well, at least it’s only Gmail.

Then I began seeing the font-size changes happening when I sent mail to other domains as well. It’s impossible to know if eM Client is sending the mail with the unexpected changes, or if something at the receiving end is changing the sizes. In either case: this never happened to me when I used Eudora.

It did happen for a while when I used Outlook at work — and eventually the bug was fixed and the unwanted size changes stopped happening.

I’ve become convinced that this is a bug. The only workaround I’ve found so far: never add boldface, italics, color changes, and so forth within a message. Very frustrating.

18

Hello.

I am convinced you are mistaken. This is a BUG, and I have successfully recovered it.
 
The problem is, as revealed by the user Andy here https://forum.emclient.com/emclient/topics/bug-oddly-formatted-text-doesnt-show-as-formatted?rfm=1&topic_submit=true
is that eMClient inserts false HTML font-size markups and other tags, in an arbitrary way, but does not show them to the user. Namely, a font-size change HTML command will be added to the email, but it will be hidden from the user, who innocently will send the chaotic email to another user who will be immediately able to see that the email is screwed.
 

19

You are absolutely correct. It is a horrendous bug, and I have recovered it and sent it to the dev team.

20

It is not about minor changes of how emails are rendered in different clients, it is a bug caused by inserting semi-randomly HTML tags, and not showing their effect to the user on eMClient. I have successfully recovered this common bug.