Outlook adds <span style='color:blue'> to HTML links in outgoing HTML emails

Question

I am creating an Outlook add-in using C# that searches for a link in an HTML (new) email body signature when a user clicks on Send button in Outlook email. I am hooking into Application_ItemSend event. What's odd is that on my machine running XP/Outlook 2007 and in another Win7/Outlook 2007 machine, I am able to search for the link in the signature with no problems. But on some other Win7/Outlook 2007 machine, I am not able to search for the link because an additional span element is being inserted by Outlook.

For example, I am searching for <a href="http://www.google.com">Link</a> in an HTML (new) email body. The link above is being inserted by a default signature so I am expecting to find it all the time. On some machines I am able to, on some machines I am not able to because the link appears like this: <a href="http://www.google.com"><span style='color:blue'>Link</span></a> I've rolled out a standard signature html file so the signatures for all machines are the same, but the issue still persists. I am still in the process of comparing the font/theme settings, but so far have seen no difference.

Does anyone have an idea on what's happening here?

Thanks.

Answer 1

To add more context, the goal of the add-in is to replace a text (in this case, a link) in an outgoing mail signature with another set of text (in this case another link, with some images). So the original link in the signature acts as a token that needs to be replaced. I don't see how parsing makes any difference. Unless I'm completely missing something obvious. Thanks

Answer 2

try to use mailItem.GetInspector.WordEditor and case it to Word Document interface. There you can access its Hyperlinks collection and do your replacement.

Answer 3

Hi developer4x,

Thanks for posting in the MSDN Forum.

The first idea of mine is your issue can be handle via text regular expressions.

please try following pattern in regular expression: <a href="http://www.google.com">[\S \s]*Link[\S \s]*</a> in your program.

Have a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
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