iOS 15 introduced new privacy features, including one big change called 'Mail Privacy Protection'. When enabled, all images are loaded via Apple's proxy servers to mask the recipient's IP address.

In our testing, this has occasionally caused certain mail images to not load correctly at all (you should see a hint at the top of the Mail app):

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If you are unable to load the images in your email, try deactivating this feature and sending your email again.

To deactivate Mail Privacy Protection, open the Settings app on your iPhone, and choose Mail > Privacy Protection > Protect Mail Activity

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If you or other recipients are viewing your newsletter on a Retina Display (e.g. iPhone, Mac or iPad), it is possible that images which are not high-quality will appear blurred and out of focus.

For this reason, you may sometimes receive a warning message like this when inserting a low quality image into your design:

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In order to ensure that your images are displayed properly on all devices, you should always try to use images with high resolution. An alternative would be to resize lower-resolution images to be smaller so they remain crisp.

Using your emails to link out to an upcoming calendar event is a great way to ensure that attendees don't forget to add the event to their calendar.

Below, you will find easy-to-follow instructions on how to link out to events created with Google, Apple and Outlook calendars in your Mail Designer 365 email designs.

Google Calendar

If you've created a Google Calendar event which you want to share with your email subscribers, you will need to create an event link to include in your email.

Here's how:

1. Set up your event in your Google Calendar.
2. Click on "Options" > "Publish Event"
3. Copy the event link to include in your email template. Important: Make sure your calendar is set to public to ensure all recipients will be able to view the event.

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Now you can insert the link into your Mail Designer 365 template; either as a text link, or attached to a call to action button:

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Apple and Outlook Calendar

For Apple and Outlook calendars, you will need to create an .ics file for the calendar event.

Simply set up your event in the calendar, then drag it on to your desktop to create the file:

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Now, upload the file to an online file hosting service (in this example, we will use Google Drive.) Right click the file to create a shareable link which you can insert into your email design:

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Remember to set the file to public if you are sharing it:

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You can now send a link to the calendar event to your subscribers, who can simply download the .ics file to add to their own calendar.

Tip: This tool is another great way of creating custom add to calendar links. Fill out your event's details and select the calendar service you wish to generate a link for (i.e. Google, Office 365, Outlook or Yahoo.) You can then copy the result to use in your Mail Designer 365 design.

Unfortunately, some email clients try to automatically adapt newsletters for dark mode by inverting colors. This can cause the dark text to appear white, even if the background is also white, making it appear as though parts of your message are missing.

This can currently happen in Gmail and Outlook mobile apps.

We have filed bug reports with the app makers that do this and have requested a better way of coordinating when they auto-switch between light & dark mode.

One possible solution in terms of your design is to find a color combination that will remain readable in all situations.

Over the past few months, we've already seen some apps adjust their dark mode behaviour multiple times, so it looks like the email app people are also still figuring things out.

Further reading:
https://litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-dark-mode-for-email-marketers

You are only allowed to add one link per image area.

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However, if you want to create the effect of having one image with multiple links, then check out our video tutorial:

Watch our video tutorial here:

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Also, please refer to the following page for a step-by-step guide on how to create the effect of having one image with multiple links:

• One image with multiple links guide

Like many other email clients today, AOL require app-specific passwords when setting up your AOL email address in another app or service.

If you want to use your AOL email account to send email designs via Mail Designer 365, you will need to generate a special password. Here's how:

1. Log in to your AOL account and go to your account settings
2. Go to the "Account Security" tab and choose "Manage app passwords."
3. From the dropdown menu, select "Other" and give the app a name (i.e. Mail Designer 365)
4. Click "Generate" to create a new password. This will appear on your screen

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This password you have just created is the password you will need to use to set up your AOL account in Mail Designer 365.

Mail Designer 365 supports special characters, which you can add to your text to create icons for call-to-action buttons or as a way to simplify your messages.

To add special characters:

‣ Open your email template if it is not already opened.

‣ Choose “Edit" > "Emoji & Symbols”

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You have different options from different categories like emojis, arrows, bullet points, stars, currency symbols, latin alphabet, trademark symbols, other letterlike symbols, math symbols, parentheses, pictographs, and punctuations.

Please refer to the following page for more information on how to add emojis and special characters in Mail Designer 365:

• Emojis and special characters guide.

Whenever you want to forward your email newsletter, please make sure to use your mail client's "Forward as Attachment" or "Redirect" feature. This ensures that the email design is forwarded and not modified. Refrain from using the forward button that you typically use to forward emails. The normal forwarding can break the email template.

What happens when you use the normal forwarding button is that the mail client will need to modify the email newsletter, so you, the user, will be able to add your own content. This typical whenever you forward a message - the forward action will prompt the mail client to give you space to write an additional message to the person you are forwarding the email to. Unfortunately, with this process, most mail clients can break the email layout and there is nothing we can do to prevent that from happening. So when you want to forward your email template to someone, our best email design practice is to use your mail client's "Forward as Attachment" or "Redirect" feature.

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Your mail account password may be wrong or empty (see Mail Accounts in Preferences).

Or you are trying to send your design from an iCloud account with 2-factor authentication set up. In this case, you will need to set up an app-specific password for Mail Designer.

Apple's support page has more information on how to set this up.

If you need to force quit your software for any reason (e.g. your screen has frozen or the app is not responding) please do one of the following:

• If the app you want to quit is in your dock, hold the "Option" (⌥) key and right-click on the app icon, then, select "Force Quit" from the menu.
• You can also hold down "Option" (⌥) + "Cmd" (⌘) + "Esc" which will trigger a window with a list of apps you have running. To force quit one or more of these apps, simply select it from the list and click the "Force Quit" button.

The formatting of the custom placeholders can differ depending on the email service provider (ESP) that you are using. For name placeholders, many ESPs will use [NAME] as the placeholder. [NAME] will then be replaced with the name of the recipient. However, this can vary. Some may require you to use [FULLNAME] or a completely different formatting. Please make sure to double-check with your email service provider.

For detailed information of how you can add placeholders for MailChimp, please visit the following page:

• Using Placeholders for MailChimp guide.

For detailed information of how you can add placeholders for Campaign Monitor, please visit the following page:

• Using Placeholders for Campaign Monitor guide.

Adding rounded corners to the background of a text area is not supported directly. However, to create this effect, drag a quadrilateral into an image area. You can find this shape under the "Basic Shapes" category.
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Adjust the size of the image area as well as the size of the shape to fit your needs. You can also change the color of the shape. On right side, you can adjust the corners by moving the corner radius slide.
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Then, drag a text object into the image area to create a text box effect. You can find text objects under "T" icon within the "Contents" tab. Feel free to position the text box and change its font style, font weight, font size, font color, etc. to fit your needs.
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Please refer to the following page for further information on how to create the effect of having rounded text box corners:

• Rounded Corners guide.

You can change the language of all equinux Software products by changing the language settings of your device. For instance, on the Mac, you can do the following:

‣ Open "System Preferences."

‣ Click "Language & Region."

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‣ Change to your preferred language by dragging your selected language to the top of the list.

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‣ Close your software. For example, with VPN Tracker, you can do so by choosing "VPN Tracker" > "Quit VPN Tracker."

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‣ Reopen the software.

In certain browsers - for example, Google Chrome - mixed http and https content is blocked by default. This can cause images to not be displayed.

At the moment, Mailchimp are serving the images exported from Mail Designer 365 over http. If your browser blocks mixed http and https content on web pages, this will explain why you are unable to see the images when you preview your templates via the Preview Mode.

We are aware of this issue and are currently working with the Mailchimp team to get it rectified.

Workaround
As a workaround, you can update your browser preferences to allow mixed content or switch to a different browser such as Safari, which by default allows mixed content.

Shopify offer a wide range of placeholder tags that you can use in your notification emails, which they refer to as liquid variables.

You can insert standard variables such as store name, customer email address, order number, etc. into a Mail Designer 365 text layout block to personalise your templates for Shopify.

Find a full list of Shopify's notification variables here.

Please note, for longer and more complex variables, such as discount properties which run over multiple lines, you may run into some difficulty with your layout.

For this reason, we advise avoiding these where possible. If you are confident with HTML, you can try to edit the exported code yourself, however, please be aware we cannot provide support for designs edited outside of Mail Designer 365.

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If your newsletter is very long, Gmail may cut off part of your content. There are a few things you can do to make the HTML document shorter:

• In general, try to reduce the number of layout blocks used. Each layout block has a HTML structure that adds to the total size of your newsletter and by reducing the number of blocks you reduce the amount of space needed for these structures.
• Avoid repeating blocks and try to find solutions for “merging” blocks. For example, don't add two or more consecutive spacer blocks. Instead, use just one spacer block and change its height accordingly.
• Sometimes you can avoid using spacer blocks altogether, for example by adding the space to a nearby image block instead, using the “spacing before/after” feature in “Styles” or simply adding blank lines.
• Instead of using several consecutive text blocks, use just one and style the paragraphs using the “Styles” feature.
• Avoid detaching blocks (that is, avoid doing modifications that only affect the mobile or desktop version). A detached block results in two blocks in the document: one for desktop and another one for mobile, which uses more space than if the same block can be used for both mobile and desktop.

We just recently found out about an API change, which causes pictures to no longer appear when exporting emails to MailChimp or Campaign Monitor or when using the "Send email" function in Mail Designer. The most current versions of Mail Designer 365 and Mail Designer Pro 3 already include a fix for this.

If you already have Mail Designer 365 and you have purchased it in the equinux Store, please download the latest version at:
http://www.equinux.com/goto/HPdownload/maildesigner365
If you already have Mail Designer 365 and you purchased in the Mac App Store, the latest version is available as an Update in the Mac App Store. Please update install it from there.

If you have Mail Designer Pro 3, please log in under my.equinux.com to download the most current version.

In case you you have an older version of Mail Designer, now is a great time to make the switch to Mail Designer 365 and profit from all new features and optimisations.

We know the proof is in the pudding code-sample, so we've put together an HTML export example for you to explore.

It's an unmodified export of one of our Design Ideas. Note that when you use the HTML feature yourself, you'll also have the option of setting an image URL, and image prefix for where your images will be hosted, as well as a custom folder and HTML file name.

Download HTML sample

All templates you want to upload to MailChimp have to contain an unsubscribe link. By adding the Unsubscribe Link to your template you can ensure that your design will look correct on mobile devices and desktop clients and the MailChimp footer will be added at the end of your message.

Add a MailChimp unsubscribe link

To add an unsubscribe link to your template, please follow these steps:

Choose the text area you want to insert the unsubscribe link to.

Please choose "Insert" > "MailChimp" > "Unsubscribe Link" from the top menu bar.

Add a MailChimp Rewards badge

You have a free MailChimp account and want to send a MailChimp campaign without the grey MailChimp Footer?
Simply add the additional "Rewards" placeholder to your design together with the unsubscribe link and your campaign will be send without the MailChimp footer.
You can add the "Rewards" placeholder by choosing "Insert" > "MailChimp" > "Rewards" from the top menu bar.

Do you have a paid MailChimp account?
In this case you don't have to add a MailChimp Rewards badge to your Mail Designer Pro document.

This points to an error while authenticating your email account. Try checking the following:

• The username is wrong/incomplete. For example, iCloud accounts sometimes work with "username" but most times need the whole email address as a log in.
• The password is wrong.
• If you're trying TLS, try STARTTLS instead.
• Maybe your server is using a custom port - though this is unlikely.

If you have a Mail program you use (e.g. Apple Mail) try comparing the outgoing mail settings there and use the same settings in Mail Designer.

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