I am composing an HTML email using a service (MailChimp). The way that MailChimp marks up headings is to use a SPAN
tag and gives the tag the inline style of
I found myself in this exact situation: needing to create header styles that displayed correctly in outlook without the ability to edit the HTML because I'm handing the template off to a client.
I imagine you've already solved this, but to anyone else who spent several hours trying to answer this question and stumbles across this thread, here's how I fixed it:
Delete Mailchimp's default H1, H2, etc.
Create your own header styles (I named them Header, Sub-Header, etc. just to avoid confusion)
Use the new header styles as you wish. The new headings display as blocks.
I'm not exactly sure what's going on under the hood as I can't inspect in Outlook, but my guess is that by not using the default styles either Mailchimp wraps the header text in divs instead of spans.