HTML formatted text not rendering correctly in composer and sent emails

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1

Hello everyone, I just moved to using Linux a few days ago. Just installed mailspring a couple days ago and honestly I am loving it. It’s so much better than the janky Microsoft Outlook.

I run a small business and have a couple email accounts that i use to send emails regularly.

Before this (on Windows 11 running google chrome and outlook) I was copying the email format provided by my invoicing software (Zoho books) to reply to a customer’s email as it has all the relevant information and customers sometimes want us to reply to the same email thread so its easier to find context.

When i copy paste the text into the compose box in Mailspring the text loses all the background colour and other attributes and mostly its just plain-text.

Here are some things I tried to isolate the problem:

  1. Used a different clipboard manager (CopyQ) and made sure I was copying and pasting the html format (didn’t think this would make a difference anyway).
  2. Used another email client (Evolution) with HTML selected as the input style in the composer options. Worked as it should. I was able to just copy and paste the text with format from Zoho books running on Chrome.
  3. Also, I checked I have rich-text editor enabled as default.

Anybody else who faced a similar problem and have a workaround/solution/alternative please do chime in.

I really don’t want to go back to Windows so I am trying to make my Linux use as convenient as possible for me.

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

2

When you paste HTML content (like from Zoho Books invoices), Mailspring sanitizes and processes the clipboard HTML before inserting it — this strips some CSS properties that it considers unsafe or unsupported, including certain background colors and complex styling. The composer uses a rich text editor (Slate.js) that supports a subset of HTML formatting, not the full CSS spec. If the formatting is critical, the best approach is to paste the content into the composer, then manually reapply any background colors or styling using the formatting toolbar. Alternatively, consider attaching the invoice as a PDF instead of pasting the HTML — this preserves the exact formatting and is often more professional for invoices anyway.