HTML customer emails not working

[Sonnie]

Setting up Zen Cart 1.3.7. Been going well, most all answers found in FAQ and searching the Forum. I have the Customer Default Email Preference in Admin>Config>Customer Details set to 1, HTML, but all emails are being received in text only. The welcome, order info, tell a friend, etc. However, the Admin notification emails are coming through as HTML. What am I missing?

[Chuckl]

Now thats a new twist, normally it's the other way around!
Check that you have Admin-Config-Email Options- Use Mime set to true, and check your customer email preferences settings for individual customers. I believe many earlier versions of ZC defaulted to 'TEXT'.

[TheOracle]

Also, is this a fresh installation of Zen-Cart v1.37 or an upgrade from earlier versions ?

[Sonnie]

Now thats a new twist, normally it's the other way around!
Check that you have Admin-Config-Email Options- Use Mime set to true, and check your customer email preferences settings for individual customers. I believe many earlier versions of ZC defaulted to 'TEXT'.

Mime HTML is set to true. Customer individual email preferences set to HTML. I have also tried PHP and Sendmail as transport methods. This is a fresh install of ZC 1.37. I thought I read in another post of someone having similar problems using PHP 5.X? My host server is running PHP 5.1.6. I am not using any newsletter options.

[Chuckl]

Customers receiving text emails rather than HTML is usually tied in with the web based email services - gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc.
Typical fixes are to ensure that the admin/includes/extra_configures folder has a copy of the /includes/extra_configures - email_use_8bit.php file, and often you need to use sendmail -f, and/or set Send From Known Domain to true.
I'm not aware of any specific PHP 5.X problems, I use nothing else but.
That said, it is a commonly voiced opinion that I'm not aware of a lot of things, so I'm happy to be enlightened.

[Sonnie]

Customers receiving text emails rather than HTML is usually tied in with the web based email services - gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc.
Typical fixes are to ensure that the admin/includes/extra_configures folder has a copy of the /includes/extra_configures - email_use_8bit.php file, and often you need to use sendmail -f, and/or set Send From Known Domain to true.
I'm not aware of any specific PHP 5.X problems, I use nothing else but.
That said, it is a commonly voiced opinion that I'm not aware of a lot of things, so I'm happy to be enlightened.

I have tested the emails on non-web based addresses, no difference. However, I do not have the file email_use_8bit.php in the admin/includes/extra_configures folder on the server. The only two files I have in this folder are index.html and media_manager.php. I have not tried sendmail -f yet, or set Send From Known Domain to true. How important is the email_use_8bit.php file, and why might I be missing It? And by the way Chuckl, many thanks for your replies, much appreciated!

[Chuckl]

You're welcome.

The email_use_8bit is used to select the mime encoding. By default it is set to 8bit, hence the file name, as it contains a define for the email encoding method. If that define is commented out, or the file is not present, it changes to 7bit default.
What this means is that if you do not put a copy of this in the admin/includes/extra_configures, any email sent via the admin section loves to default to 7bit encoding, so it is a good idea to put a copy there, just to ensure that 8bit is selected.
The send from known domain and sendmail -f are essentially the same thing, they replace the usual from address of the shop mail - usually user www-data or similar with the shop Email From address, which is usually a more sensible [email protected] or similar. This seems to make quite a few mail systems happier to accept HTML mail.

[Chuckl]

The fact that your Admin notifications are coming through as HTML also suggests that there is nothing too much wrong with your settings, but that dodgy encoding settings or security are causing the HTML to be ditched.

[Sonnie]

Thank you. I will try using the sendmail -f method and send from known domain. According to the headers, the emails being received show Content-Tranfer-Encoding as 8bit. I am assuming I can find the file email_use_8bit.php somewhere else within the ZC files.

[Chuckl]

Yup, in /includes/extra_configures/ i.e. the shop includes folder chain, rather than the admin one.
In my lurching around with this stuff, I saw several cases where the encoding was labelled as 8bit, but actually 7bit and vice versa, hence the HTML mail being dumped as suspect.