Email formatting basics (links in plain text emails)

html css email hyperlink html-email
Matthew picture Matthew · Mar 15, 2011 · Viewed 39.4k times · Source

Sending an email from a server isn't quite as easy as sending it from a client.

I know I can choose to send plain text or html, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.

I have a link in the email that the user should click to reset their password.

When I send the whole link, and check my gmail, it becomes a hyperlink automatically.

My guess is that this isn't the case in all email clients.

What are my options for sending a link in plain text format?

Is the only way to be sure to have a clickable link to use html?

If I use html, what is the minimum markup I must have?

Answer

Diodeus - James MacFarlane picture Diodeus - James MacFarlane · Mar 15, 2011

If you send your email in plain text, then your URL will be plain text. It's plain text, you can't dress it up.

If you send it as HTML, just use a simple anchor tag and use the URL as both the href and the text. That way if a mail client removes the link at least the user will still be able to copy/paste the url.

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