I just noticed something today…. underscores in e-mail could present a problem. Let me explain.
I’m a member of Toastmasters, and I do the newsletter for our club. Every month, I write it in Word, and then convert it to a PDF (I must have three or four different PDF converters.) One part of the newsletter is a section that lists the various jobs the members will be performing at the next meeting. And whomever is supposed to be “Toastmaster” for the evening has their e-mail address go next to their name in case someone has to contact them. Never been a problem before.
Until today.
This month’s Toastmaster uses an underscore in her e-mail address, and I noticed the PDF converter was getting it wrong for whatever reason – it “looked” ok in the document, but the anchor text (what actually gets mailed to when you click on it) was missing everything to the left of the underscore. Try as I might, I could not get it to work. I tried two online converters with the same results.
The end result is I’ll have to put a little note in the newsletter’s e-mail explaining that if someone wants to contact her, write out the e-mail that’s shown instead of clicking the link (because as I mentioned, despite what’s in the document, the link’s anchor text is missing everything to the left of the underscore.)
So, if you use an underscore in your e-mail address, well… after seeing this, I’d advise that you don’t. For whatever reason, some PDF converters (and likely other stuff) don’t see it very well. Imagine if you sent out 1,000 PDF fliers and expecting a few e-mails back… and the PDF converter didn’t pick up your full e-mail address.
Why this happens, I don’t know, but I’ve been a computer junkie for more than 20 years – sometimes, stuff just happens 🙂
Just a heads up.