Outlook 2010- Inline tables - html

Question

I'm creating responsive emails that turn two-column layouts into stacked one-column emails when viewed on a phone. The process works fine but requires some code massaging to make desktop-based Outlook 2010 happy. This page explains the process and the steps one must take in order to please Outlook 2010. The fix works great.
http://www.emailonacid.com/blog/details/C13/removing_unwanted_spacing_or_gaps_between_tables_in_outlook_2007_2010
...except when the email is very long. Once the first column of content reaches a certain length, Outlook stops placing the second column beside it and instead throws it well down the layout, to the point that it will create a large gutter under the first column of content and a huge blank header above the right column. The code below, as simple as it is, will duplicate this behavior if you open it in IE and choose File/Send page by email. You can make the rendering problem go away by deleting a few of the X's, whihc points to a ling length limit or some crazy "I'm looking for a page break" behavior by the Word rendering engine. I rknow that the Word rendering engine sucks, but I want to know a guideline stating when this problem will happen, because at this point most of the problems with the Word engine have been documented, and are fairly consistent. My problem is that most people know to send short emails, so the don't have this issue. I work with groups that love quantity.
If anyone knows how to avoid this or knows the specific trigger characteristics, let me know. FYI, you can replace the br's with p's or rows and the problem is the same. Obviously, the emails I send out are much more complex than this, but that was the point with this code, to show how simple things can be while still producing the problem.
<table width="100" border="0" cellsbracing="0" cellbradding="0" valign="top">
<tr></tr>
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top"><table align="left">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="tobr">
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>X<br>
X<br></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table align="left">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">O<br>
O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O
<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O
<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O<br>O</td>
</tr>
</table></td>
</tr>
</table>

Answer 1

Blimey, check me out necro'ing a month old question.
I don't want to sound pedantic or patronising, and i don't know if this is actually the code you've used to replicate the problem or you've simply rewritten it to post here - but little errors that a browser can interpret correctly go horribly wrong when interpreted by an email client.
so, just to clarify little errors like spelling mistakes, namely things like this :
<cellbradding>
and there's a good few elements missing their end tags.
it might be worth your while to run the emails through the w3c validator as transitional, simply to pick out them kind of errors, or an any IDE that supports HTML.
i know the only times i've had crazy rendering issues with emails was when they didnt know how to interpret something crazy i'd written.