Is it possible to have images in automatic emails?

[Amir-Homayoun_J]

Hello,

I am wondering whether it is possible to add an image to the body of the emails that are sent using automation? I want to add the logo of the company to the signature.

Thanks
Amir-Homayoun

[JonathanBowen]

Hi @Amir-Homayoun_Javadi - no, is doesn’t look like you can do this. Although the email body field supports markdown, it doesn’t support image markdown. This would work in a .md file:

![Airtable](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Airtable_Logo.svg/640px-Airtable_Logo.svg.png)

But it doesn’t work in the email action. This ties in with this article which makes no mention of images.

[kuovonne]

Actually, Airtable quietly added support for images in automation emails a while ago. You use an html image tag. You can even set the height and width of the image (unlike in markdown).

Per the bottom of this support article …

We support using Markdown syntax and a variety of HTML tags within your emails to ensure things are formatted the way you’d like. We currently support using the following HTML tags: <b> , <br> <u> , <strong> , <em> , <img> , <a> and <span> tags. You can also include inline CSS by adding a style attribute to your HTML tags.

[Amir-Homayoun_J]

Jonathan and Kuovonne, thanks for your reply. Much appreciated.

[JonathanBowen]

@kuovonne - I tried a regular html <img> tag too, but this doesn’t work for me either. Did you get this working?

[JonathanBowen]

Oh I see why this didn’t work. It is a bug really. This image:

https://dl.airtable.com/.attachments/e5d6574fb1f4c9cb38133a2bb7fa2f12/cde44e23/pcgb18_0338_fine.jpg

has underscores in it and it doesn’t render.

This image (no underscores) does:

https://1.cms.s81c.com/sites/default/files/2021-08-17/2020%20Corporate%20Environment%20Report.png

And by chance I had picked one with underscores

[kuovonne]

I’ve done it a while ago. I put the entire body of my message in a long text field and then included only that one field in the message body. If you try to put it in piecemeal, you might experience some variations.

[kuovonne]

JonathanBowen:

has underscores in it

I recall that including links in emails sometimes had problems too and needed escaping. Airtable got confused and would think that the underscores were markdown syntax.

[JonathanBowen]

Yep - I think that’s what it is doing. As it is inside the src attribute at this point, you would think it would deal with this, but a bug that can be workaround I guess, without too much issue. As you say, forming the full html content in a long text field is also a nice way of doing this

[Amir-Homayoun_J]

kuovonne:

I’ve done it a while ago. I put the entire body of my message in a long text field and then included only that one field in the message body. If you try to put it in piecemeal, you might experience some variations.

@kuovonne sorry, this might be a very simple question. But how do you “put the entire body of the message in a long text field and then included only that one field in the message body”? Can you copy-paste a sample here? Thanks.

[kuovonne]

Amir-Homayoun_Javadi:

But how do you “put the entire body of the message in a long text field and then included only that one field in the message body”?

I do this with scripting. I have scripts that generate records in an email table with the body fully formed. This lets me have many different email templates that I use with button fields, but takes up only one of the twenty-five automations.

[Amir-Homayoun_J]

Thanks @kuovonne I am on the free version, so no scripting. I might get back to this when I have more complicated tasks. Thanks again.

[Anna]

Just wanted to chime in to say that I came here looking for this answer (HTML tag) and it worked perfectly for me - both using Airtable’s native email and using the Gmail integration. Yay!

A few notes:

• Like @JonathanBowen I initially used a URL with underscores in it and it failed - but URLs with no underscores worked great.
• In the Airtable email, the image was distorted on mobile - but using Gmail, the image dynamically adjusted. I’ll be using Gmail!

[Anna]

As I posted above, I was able to successfully implement an HTML image embed code in an Airtable Automation Gmail email by hard-entering the code into the Message. More recently, I took it one step further and used a formula (below) to generate unique a HTML image embed code for each of about 50 recipients, then inserted it as a dynamic field into the Message. At first I thought it didn’t work, but after re-testing the trigger, it did! Hope this helps someone else trying to do something similar in the future.

"<img src=" & {Image Link} & " width=800 alt=Alt Text" & ">"

[Thomas_de_Beauc]

I just tried and it worked, you can have underscores in the url if you escape them.

For instance, if your image is https://someurl.org/your_image.png,

<img width="200" height="26" src="https://someurl.org/your\_image.png">

will work.