Yes, you can type a long subject to an email, but it’s not much help to the reader.
Recently we’ve received quite a few emails with long subject lines, sometimes only a subject with no message at all! We explain why they are difficult to read in Outlook despite Outlook letting you type them in the first place.
Outlook lets you type in long subject lines for emails
You are ‘limited’ to 254 characters in writing a subject line however most mail clients can’t display anything like that length of subject. Even the relatively short 78 characters from Shelley is too much.
See what happens when you view the same message in different email clients. This example uses ‘only’ 78 characters – we’ve received emails with the entire message in a long and hidden subject line over 200 characters.
Gmail
Gmail wraps the longer subject line quite well.
Outlook
Outlook’s ability to show subject lines is somewhat controlled by the width of the preview pane or message window. When the subject is too long the rest is hidden from you.
To see the rest of the subject line you can try widening the pane or message window.
Failing that you may be able to scroll to see the rest of the subject if vertical scroll buttons appear on left of the subject.
If all else fails you can select the subject line, select all the text (Ctrl +A) and paste the text somewhere else (eg a blank doc in Word) to see the entire line.
Since you don’t know what email program the receiver of a message might use, it’s best to stick with short subject lines.
