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Why is HTML custom email not formatting correctly?

Kenny Tanaka November 12, 2025

I'm extremely new with html so I'm not sure at all that my code is correct. However, I have been checking it with an html tester and against other work so I'm confused as to why my formatting is completely ignored/different when the emails actually get sent out.

This is what I have:

<head>
<style type="text/css">
p {center: aligned; width: 90%; padding: 5px 15px 5px 15px; font-family: Arial; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
h1 {center: aligned; width: 90%; padding: 5px 10px 0px 10px; font-family: Arial; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
h4 {center: aligned; width: 90%; padding: 5px 15px 5px 15px; font-family: Arial; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
.custom-hr {border: none; border-top: 2px solid #ccc; width: 90%; center: aligned}
</style>
</head>

 

Initially, I had everything in a table but I was reading around in other forums and it sounded like tables were sot of problematic for Jira. To summarize, the issue is that when i put this code in a tester, all of the text will be aligned and have the right width and be properly colored etc. etc. However, when I put in in my Jira automation with HTML custom emails, the custom width and color of the text is not used. This makes the emails look rather ugly. Has anyone else experienced this issue? or is there something I'm not doing correctly? I would appreciate the help a lot.

Thank you

1 answer

0 votes
Andy Rusnak
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
November 12, 2025

Hi Kenny, 

Thanks for posting to the Atlassian Community!  

I ran a quick test in my own system and it looks like the styles you have should work if I am understanding the situation correctly.  I wrote some similar styles and they were used when the email was sent from A4J.  

To confirm a few things: 

  • You are using an Automation rule that is configured to "Send Email" action with the "Content Format" set to HTML?  
  • I assume what was shared was just a snippet of the styles in the head tag, in my tests I set ups something like what is below (of course with actual content in for the styles)

<html>

<head>

<style>

---- insert CSS styles here ---- 

</style>

</head>

<body>

----- insert content of the body using the styled references from above -----

</body>

</html>

  • Is that something similar to what you have in your setup?  

Thanks, 

Andy 

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