Trouble with colspan in Outlook 07/10/13

Not really an answer but try to avoid col and row span. Its as dangerous for the rendering as for code modification. Use fit into table.

I use rowspans and colspans no problem when building actual charts. However, when it comes to the overall layout of the template, I'll use nested tables if that makes sense. I haven't had any recent issues with Outlook using the two attributes, so it's hard to say what could be the issue without looking at the actual code.

Looks like Outlook has a problem with colspan if it is defined on the very first row of the table.
One of workarounds: try to create an empty first line without using colspan and defining width for each cell.
Honestly, that didn't work for me and I just redesigned the template using only nested tables.

Hi Veronica,

I'm not aware of any changes to how Outlook 2007 - 2013 interprets colspans, but ideally you should consider table nesting and removing the use of colspan entirely. The main reason I'd suggest this is because table nesting is far more reliable across all clients than using colspan/rowspan.

Other than that, I'd suggest checking for any erroneous closing tag/syntax issues, as Outlook has been known to parse such code literally creating some very weird results when there are syntax issues.