# Is it possible to style the activation mail?

**URL:** <https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039>\
**Category:** Design\
**Created:** [August 23, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039 "2020-08-23T16:36:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Yaniv\_Gershon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/yaniv_gershon/32/6847_2.png) [@Yaniv\_Gershon](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/Yaniv_Gershon)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039/1 "2020-08-23T16:36:17Z")

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We want to style the activation mail that our user get when they register. Can we do that?

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**Author:** ![clemente](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c67d28/32.png) [@clemente](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/clemente)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2020, 1:04am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039/2 "2020-08-24T01:04:52Z")

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Yes, you can do everything 🙂  
The activation e-mail is [here](https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/blob/master/common/templates/student/edx_ace/accountactivation/email/) (body.html and body.txt). Instead of directly modifying the template, a better way to separate your customizations is to [create a theme](https://edx.readthedocs.io/projects/edx-installing-configuring-and-running/en/latest/configuration/changing_appearance/theming/create_theme.html). This takes a while but it lets you customize and override any template or parts of templates. [A simple introduction](https://dehamzah.com/comprehensive-theming-on-openedx). It’s easier to change some CSS or images first for practice, and when it works start changing the templates.  
Of course, directly modifying the file (without a theme) also works, but this makes upgrading Open edX harder because the new code can conflict with your changes.

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**Author:** ![Yaniv\_Gershon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.openedx.org/yaniv_gershon/32/6847_2.png) [@Yaniv\_Gershon](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/Yaniv_Gershon)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 8:33am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039/3 "2020-08-26T08:33:01Z")

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Thank you very much 🙂

We use a theme, but we don’t use edx ace and our activation email text is inside a file called activation\_mail.txt  
do we need to install ACE or to do something else before we create there directories and files in the theme?

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**Author:** ![clemente](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c67d28/32.png) [@clemente](https://discuss.openedx.org/u/clemente)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2020, 10:29am UTC](https://discuss.openedx.org/t/is-it-possible-to-style-the-activation-mail/3039/4 "2020-08-26T10:29:07Z")

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I think you find [activation\_mail.txt](https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/blob/master/themes/stanford-style/lms/templates/emails/activation_email.txt) which is a different e-mail (the text is different from the other e-mail I linked). I’m not sure which one is used, but you can find the one which is used. Then to replace it, you create files in the theme, with the same path of the files that you want to overwrite.