How do I stop Outlook from rendering an email address as a mailto: link?

Question

I am creating an HTML email to be sent to a user. If there is a valid email address to within an HTML email, Outlook will render it (normally helpfully) as a mailto: link.

Answer 1

After trying all the valid solutions here, I came up with one on my own. For various reasons, none of the others worked, because I am required to achieve this result on all email clients, not just Outlook.

I added an invisible image spacer before and after the @ symbol as well as before the 'com'.

writehere@example.com

to

writehere@example.com

Additionally I added a class (and this could be directed toward mobile):

img[class="nullsp"] { height:0px !important; width:0px !important; display:none !important; visibility: hidden !important;}

This fixed the issue in all email clients including gmail, yahoo and aol. The only issue is in outlook a tiny space is visible where the images would be, and if you copy and paste the address into a text editor, spaces appear.

A test in EOA shows this to work on most client/browser combinations that I tested: Safari, IE9, Chrome, Firefox; Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN; Outlook, Android4. According to EOA, it still linked in Apple Mail6 and iPad2 and Iphone5 and 6; however on my own iPhone5 it did not link. And EOA is not famous for its accuracy.

I would appreciate anyone who could respond with a similar solution to the 4 devices I listed which failed.

~Libby