The Altru email editor is a WYSIWYG editor sitting on top of HTML. It’s fine for swapping a sentence or updating a date, and frustrating the moment you try to remove a block of text, rearrange a layout, or clean up a footer. Almost every “it won’t let me delete this” problem comes from the same place: the thing you’re trying to edit lives in the HTML underneath, not in the text you can see.
This guide covers how to make the common edits reliably, why some edits fight back, and when it’s better to rebuild than to keep patching.
Know which view you’re in
The editor gives you a visual (design) view and a way to see or edit the underlying HTML source. Use them for different jobs:
- Visual view for wording changes, bold and italic, links, and inserting merge fields.
- Source view for anything structural: deleting whole sections, removing empty rows, fixing spacing, or changing the footer.
Exact toolbar labels and button placement can differ depending on your Altru version and where you opened the editor (an email template, an acknowledgment, an appeal message). If you can’t find the source view, check the editor toolbar for an HTML or source icon, or ask Blackbaud support where it lives in your setup.
Why text won’t delete
When you highlight a paragraph and press Delete, and nothing happens or an empty gap stays behind, it’s usually one of these:
- The text is inside a table cell. Most email templates are built with tables for layout. You can delete the words but not the cell itself from the visual view, so the empty space remains. Remove the whole
<tr>or<td>in source view instead. - It’s a merge field, not text. Fields that pull constituent names, membership details, or order information are tokens. They often select and delete as a single unit, and partial selection can behave oddly. Click once to select the whole field, then delete.
- Hidden formatting came along with a paste. Text pasted from Word or Google Docs brings nested
<span>and<div>tags with inline styles. You delete the words, but the empty tags keep their height. Look for leftover tags in source view and remove them. - The content belongs to a template layer you aren’t editing. If a header or footer appears in every message, it may come from a shared template rather than the message you have open. Edit it where it’s defined, or every new message will bring it back.
Editing the footer
Footers deserve extra care because they usually carry the unsubscribe link and your organization’s mailing address. Both matter for deliverability and for anti-spam rules like CAN-SPAM. Before changing a footer:
- Copy the current footer HTML into a text file so you can restore it.
- Leave the unsubscribe or preference link intact. If it’s a system-generated token, don’t retype it as a plain link.
- Keep a physical mailing address in the footer.
- Send a test to yourself and click the unsubscribe link to confirm it still resolves.
If you want one footer used everywhere, put it in the template your messages are built from rather than pasting it into each message. That’s the difference between one future edit and twenty.
Changing layout without breaking it
Moving a two-column section to one column, or reordering blocks, is where the visual editor struggles most. A few habits help:
- Move whole table rows in source view, not pieces of text in the visual view. Cut from
<tr>to</tr>and paste it where you want it. - Keep the layout simple. Single-column emails read better on phones and are much easier to edit later.
- Set image widths explicitly so a large image doesn’t push the layout off the side of a phone screen.
- Paste as plain text whenever you bring in copy from another document, then reapply formatting in the editor.
When to stop patching and rebuild
Templates that have been edited by several people over several years collect layers of leftover tags. If a message has spacing you can’t explain, styles that change when you touch them, or a source view you no longer recognize, it’s often faster to start a clean template:
- Copy the final text of the existing email into a plain text file.
- Start from a simple, clean template (or a basic single-column table layout).
- Rebuild the structure in source view, then paste the text back in as plain text.
- Re-insert merge fields using the editor’s field picker, not by copying them from the old version.
- Send tests to a few inboxes, including Gmail and Outlook on a phone, before using it live.
Save the clean version as your base template and build future messages from it, so the cleanup doesn’t have to happen again.
Video walkthrough
The following videos cover working with email content in Altru.
A separate option for automated emails
For one-off messages, the native editor with the habits above usually gets the job done. For recurring emails such as eTickets, acknowledgments, renewal reminders, and post-visit follow-ups, our Email Designer sends automated, branded emails driven by Altru queries, without manual exports.
Quick answers
Why does an empty gap stay after I delete text?
The text was inside a table cell or wrapped in leftover tags. Remove the empty row or tags in source view.
Can I safely edit the HTML directly?
Yes, if you copy the original first and send a test afterward. Small mistakes, like an unclosed tag, can break the rest of the layout.
