Why does my form stretch out too wide when received in an email message?

I have a form that uses an email data connection to send an active view of the form at a certain stage.  The problem is that for some, but not all users, the form appears very wide or stretched out when they open in Outlook.  Does anyone know why this happens? 

I've read a little bit on this issue and of other's experiences, and I've seen different thoughts on the cause ranging from the date pickers to merged cells to control widths of 100%.  To be sure, I set every control or textbox to a set length and none are 100% width.  The form was built using a layout table, and some rows have been split into multiple columns for layout/appearance purposes.  It appears that anything that exists only in the first column, any row that is unsplit (spans all 7 columns) or any columns merged together with the first appear fine and not affected, while anything that exists solely in 2nd column or after or that are not merged with the first column are pushed out way wide to the right.

Does anyone have any insight on what is happening with this issue? Thanks so much for any input!

June 2nd, 2010 6:44pm

For me, it has always come down to fixed widths instead of 100% or auto widths (for the table elements and the controls).  I haven't had the more advanced issues you're seeing regarding the messed up columns, though.
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June 2nd, 2010 7:21pm

The fixed widths vs 100% or auto widths is a possible fix I've read, so I made sure to set each column and control to a fixed width but it didn't fix the problem.  After really digging into what could be causes, the one thing that stands out is the fields/textboxes on my form that are pushed out wide (which causes the stretched appearance) are contained in one or more (merged) of columns 2 through 7.  Anything in column 1 or spanning multple columns that are merged with column 1 are ok.

  • Edited by SW18 Wednesday, June 02, 2010 7:46 PM grammar edit
  • Marked as answer by Seven M Friday, June 11, 2010 7:17 AM
June 2nd, 2010 7:46pm

So the short answer is: you're screwed.

That's pretty bad guys. Can't even get a table to work.

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April 25th, 2012 10:21am

I to find this the most annoying thing; how do you expect people to want to use it when the simplest of tasks results in something that looks horrible.
September 13th, 2012 9:59am

If you change the controls to Calculated Values, it works fine. Having Text Boxes (and some of the other controls) causes this issue. Since the values will only be read-only on an email, Calculated Values seem to be the way to go.
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September 4th, 2015 3:36am

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