# Email reply formatting
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** email
**Created:** [June 27, 2025, 6:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043 "2025-06-27T18:30:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2025, 6:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/1 "2025-06-27T18:30:54Z")
Using Discourse as a ticket/support system for our company.
Everything was super easy to set up so I applaud all the people that came before in order to pave the way.
The only thing I’m finding a little odd is how carriage returns are being handled when going back and forth between e-mail and the web interface.
I created a new ticket via e-mail like so:
```plaintext
This is a semi-final test to make sure that staged user creation works correctly for tickets.
Thanks,
David
```
And it showed up as a new topic correctly, looking the same.
I replied using the web interface and typed:
```plaintext
This is a reply to test ticket 7. So far so good.
Thanks,
Support
```
But the e-mail that was received back to the OP looks like:
```plaintext
This is a reply to test ticket 7. So far so good. Thanks, Support
```
The next reply, from e-mail client to forum went like so:
```plaintext
This is a reply to the reply to test ticket 7.
Confused yet?
Thanks,
David
```
Posted as:
```plaintext
This is a reply to the reply to test ticket 7.Confused yet?
Thanks,
David
```
And the final reply was sent from support staff to “customer” via e-mail. Email formatted like so, (and showed up on the topic the same way):
```plaintext
The only thing confusing me is why the formatting gets messed up?
Thanks,
Support
```
But again was all one line in the e-mail that the customer received.
I need to fix it so it’s consistently adding line breaks where I need them. Sometimes our replies might be several paragraphs long and we’ll need those breaks for readability.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [June 27, 2025, 7:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/2 "2025-06-27T19:14:14Z")
Just noticed that bold and italics don’t translate from web to e-mail either.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [June 30, 2025, 2:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/3 "2025-06-30T14:32:16Z")
Can anyone confirm this is also happening for them?
Is it just something about my specific setup?
I’m trying to move our company over to Discourse for our tickets and away from what we currently use as I really dislike it, but it does at least keep formatting correct.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/4 "2025-07-03T18:19:31Z")
Has nobody else dealt with this issue?
Even if you haven’t please let me know so that I can verify that it’s something specific to my setup as opposed to a general Discouse issue.
---
### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2025, 7:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/5 "2025-07-03T19:12:38Z")
i think student finance England have this problem, but worse their line breaks are taken out altogether and you get no space
but you can put a bizzarly formatted email on discourse composer and it fixes itself, like magic…
looks like your outbound mail parser likes to remove line breaks
is there a way to force the line breaks to be parsed?
---
### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/6 "2025-07-03T19:18:00Z")
> [@tknospdr](#):
>
> Just noticed that bold and italics don’t translate from web to e-mail either.
neither deos rendered Math, though the parser deos strip the $ signs
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2025, 7:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/7 "2025-07-03T19:26:09Z")
I’ve just done a quick test with a PM to a test user and it looks fine in zohomail:
The PM:
The email:
What email client did you send it to?
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 3, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/8 "2025-07-03T22:40:51Z")
I have viewed received messages in Apple Mail, Zoho webmail, and Gmail online.
The server is sending outbound messages with Zoho mail settings.
I sent this from Discourse:
This is what it looks like in Zoho mail and Apple mail:
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 5:49am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/9 "2025-07-04T05:49:05Z")
> [@tknospdr](#):
>
> Just noticed that bold and italics don’t translate from web to e-mail either.
Just for an extra data point, mine also work fine for this as well:
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 11:29am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/10 "2025-07-04T11:29:17Z")
Alright, this is definitely something with how I’ve set up this site’s email functionality.
I set up another site’s e-mail functionality and everything seems to be working correctly.
I think this is a function of how I’ve had to forward e-mail for the testing of ticketing while our official e-mail address is still in use by our old system.
I’m pretty confident at this point that once I can send e-mail directly it should work.
Thanks for the help!
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 1:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/11 "2025-07-04T13:35:10Z")
Looks like it’s something else about how the site is set up, I removed the extra forward and all my formatting is still being stripped.
So now I’m back to being at a loss.
Both sites use [smtppro.zoho.com](http://smtppro.zoho.com) based accounts for sending out email.
It’s not possible that a theme component or plugin would affect anything like this would it?
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 2:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/12 "2025-07-04T14:08:47Z")
> [@tknospdr](#):
>
> It’s not possible that a theme component or plugin would affect anything like this would it?
Hmm. 🤔 Not that I can think of. (Which isn’t a hard no 🙂)
You could try checking your site settings with the ‘Only show overridden’ checkbox selected and see if you can spot any differences between the problem site and the working site.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 2:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/13 "2025-07-04T14:37:39Z")
Good thought. The only 2 items that I would have thought could possibly affect email that were different was:
- Forwarded email behavior (create replies on bad) (hidden on good)
- Manual polling enabled (push emails using the API) on for bad, off for good
I changed them on the bad site and no joy.
I turned off the Topic Card theme component since it modifies the way text looks on the site and is not in use on the working site. No change with that either.
I sent a reply on the site using [safe mode](https://meta.discourse.org/t/53504?silent=true) and there was no change there either.
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/14 "2025-07-04T17:46:38Z")
Anything different in the email setup outside of Discourse? No ‘send emails as boring old plain text please’ setting on the [smtppro.zoho.com](http://smtppro.zoho.com) side?
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2025, 6:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/15 "2025-07-04T18:56:33Z")
I don’t have access to the super admin account for Zoho for my work site.
I’ll take a look at the settings for my own account and see if anything looks like it could make a difference.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 3:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/16 "2025-07-07T15:15:44Z")
I changed the SMTP server in use on the site with the formatting issue to use the same one as the site that’s sending replies with proper formatting.
Still broken.
So there’s definitely an issue with the site itself, but I have no idea where else to look for a fix.
I could really use some more handholding. I’ve got to get this fixed.
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 8:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/17 "2025-07-07T20:14:38Z")
I just tested sending a response from another user on the site. Issue remains, so it’s not user based.
What’s the likelihood of the server it’s hosted on having any impact on this issue?
---
### Author:  [@tknospdr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tknospdr)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 3:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/18 "2025-07-08T15:17:42Z")
I found the **freaking** culprit!
I had enabled _Post excerpts in emails_
The description is
> In notification emails, always send excerpts instead of full posts
But that’s not quite correct.
1. It applies to ALL emails, not just notifications.
2. An excerpt is a small portion, there is no need to strip formatting just because it’s not the entire message.
In my mind, a reply received via e-mail isn’t a notification, it’s a reply. A notification is, “Hey user X just @mentioned you.”
I’m just glad I can now move forward with out new ticketing system. I hope this helps someone else. And maybe the team can either fix that setting, or at least clarify the description.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2025, 3:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/email-reply-formatting/372043/19 "2025-08-07T15:17:54Z")
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