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Schmactor

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 5, 2014
125
15
Been curious about this odd little quirk. When looking at my inbox in the mail app, each email has a short preview of its contents. But for certain emails the preview contains text that’s nowhere in the body of the email itself. It’s not totally random text, however, because it usually deals with the same subject of the email or is even a slightly different wording of text in the email. Here’s a couple examples: I get emails from a financial service. In the preview it has the text “Let’s reach your savings goals together” but this text is nowhere in the email itself or the subject line. In another example, for a union I am a part of, the email states “We are advising our members if you are working in your own home and being asked to provide additional services you should negotiate additional compensation.” But the preview in the inbox shows “We advise that you should negotiate additional compensation when...” Where is the preview finding this text? Is it hidden somewhere? Is some AI reading the email and then paraphrasing contents? I’m just super confused and curious about what is happening.
 

alceryes

macrumors newbie
May 19, 2020
6
2
This can happen when emails are sent in HTML format.

The preview line only shows plain text. Once you open the email all the HTML/RTF formatting is processed and you are viewing the HTML page.

E.g. when you hit F12 in any standard computer web browser you can view that webpage's HTML code. Your preview line is showing the code whereas the actual webpage is akin to when you open the email.

This is not a bug in any way. Many email senders (usually mass mailers, ads, corporate info) will put a plain text message at the head of the webpage specifically for the purpose of seeing it in preview. If the email you are sent is completely plain text both the preview and open email will match because no extra processing is done.
 
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