How to format an email ?

[chicane]

I want to include an itemised list of goods ordered in a confirmation email sent to customers from an RBSWorldpay payment page, ie one or more lines of goods, number, price each, total.

Is there any reason why you're using tabs rather than spaces?

Last time I did something similar to what you're trying to accomplish here, I just padded the content of each cell in the table with spaces until the size reached the width in characters of the containing column. If you want something to be left-aligned within a column, you add spaces to the right, and for right-alignment you add spaces to the left.

Below shows how this would look in a plain text email client:

Item                           Quantity      Total
--------------------------------------------------
Blue Widget                          21      10.40
Green Widget                          4       6.20
Flourescent Widget                    3       1.20

Apologies if I've completed missed the point.

[expat]

As far as I'm concerned, using HTML in email is like adding sound effects to your phone calls.

I like that.