Preview mails in SOST shows screwed up mail messages and hyperlinks not working

Suddenly you notice when previewing generated mails in SOST that layout doesn't seem what you expect (layout is screwed) and hyperlinks are not working.

You think you didn't do a good job in coding the mail generation ? Made mistakes in setting up your mail template. Possible... but there might be another issue.

It is possible that system administrators activated the function SAP has added to remove all coding/tags that might be cross-site scripting sensitive, or you did an upgrade to 7.31 (see below).

The first sign for this is that previewing the mail template in SOST shows you the "Document changed due to security requirements".

This behavior can be influenced by setting parameter HTML_FILTER_FOR_DISPLAY.

Note : In Release 7.30 and lower, the filter function is deactivated (OFF) by default. In Release 7.31 and higher, the filter function is activated (ON) by default.

More info can be found in SAP OSS notes (OSS-user id required) :

• Displaying doc. contents that were changed w/o authorization
• Message "Document changed due to security requirements" (SO596) displayed and the HTML formatting ruined