04-16-2010, 05:49 AM

Hi All

Ok I have been a dedicated user of Outlook for many years. Now with my new Mac I have started using Mac Mail. It seems to do all this things I need pretty well.

Only thing I am struggling with is fonts. When I send an email and then have a response It often has a different font. So peopel are not seeing messages as I sent them I think. This is my work email and is not a good look.

I have some photos of my settings. Any suggestions?

04-16-2010, 05:54 AM

Well you have 2 different Arial font's selected there, hence the difference, but people will be seeing the font as you send it, and you are seeing what they send back in a different font because of your settings.
Change them to be the same and you should be fine.

04-16-2010, 05:56 AM

You do not have any control over what fonts other people have on their computers. Apple tries to stick to a fairly universal set of fonts, but again what the receiver sees is very dependent on what they have. You have no control over it beyond some basic things like what is bold and what isn't bold, colours etc.

Here's a tip that has nothing to do with your problem, but will make your life better: uncheck the box (pictured in your post) that says "Display Remote Images in HTML Messages." Here's why:

1. HTML messages are generally spam. But if you get non-spam HTML messages (like let's say Apple emails), you can turn the images on for that message only. HTML code (particularly invisible "spacers") are one of the ways spammers can tell that you've looked at their message, which makes them (of course) send you more.

2. While it's not possible for malicious HTML code to do any harm to your computer or expose any of your information, it DOES tell the sender your IP address (this relates to point #1 above), which means that if you have remote images disables, you CAN safely examine spam or suspected spam messages without letting the spammer know.

3. By not loading all those images, all your email will flow in faster. Again, you always have the option of loading images when you WANT to on a message-by-message basis, but you're protected the rest of the time.

I think this is the single best reason why I tend to get far less spam than anyone I know.

04-16-2010, 08:06 AM

Originally Posted by Kevriano

Well you have 2 different Arial font's selected there, hence the difference, but people will be seeing the font as you send it, and you are seeing what they send back in a different font because of your settings.
Change them to be the same and you should be fine.

Hi

That did not seem to work. I do have 2 different Arial fonts but they seem to be for different thing. One for composing mail.

What I do not understand is why it's my font that changes?

i.e. I send an email using Arial 13. I receive a reply from someone using say Calibri. The reply I revive has the Calibri as is should but my original message has changed to Times New Roman.

I am using Mac Mail and the other person is on Outlook 2007.

Any other suggestions?

04-20-2010, 05:59 AM

I have spent all morning using different settings and still no joy.

When i send a message it reverts to Times New Roman.

Please help.

04-20-2010, 06:13 AM

Perhaps the other person has Outlook set to display messages as Times New Roman, regardless of the original font?

04-20-2010, 06:38 AM

Originally Posted by Aptmunich

Perhaps the other person has Outlook set to display messages as Times New Roman, regardless of the original font?

No, I have looked at that.

Also, I have a signature that is set to areal 13. This turns up fine and is tha same font.

04-20-2010, 03:35 PM

What I have noticed about Mail is that it seems to send plain text emails as the default even if you have selected Rich Text as you have above. This means that the user receiving emails gets to decide what fonts are used to display the email. To get the user to see the fonts you are using you have to click on the fonts button when writing an email and change it to something else or add some kind of formatting like underlining, bold, etc.

I've testing this out a few times myself by sending email to myself with my Yahoo account and also by logging into my Gmail account as opposed to using it through Mail. It does seem that each email software interprets things a little different. If you don't manually change the format like I said above it seems that some email software will use your default font while others won't.

04-20-2010, 03:47 PM

Email should be plain text. No crazy funky backgrounds with pictures of your kids from last years trip to DisneyWorld.
I set it to plain text, and when I reply I force it to plain text.

08-09-2011, 01:56 AM

I see the same situation when I see email reply from Yahoo uses Times New Roman instead of Verdana, the one I specified in the original. The text color is retained though. I took a look at the email message in 'source format'. Apple Mail 3.6 (my version) sends a simple text message (in rich text) in 2 versions. One is plain-text, the other with formatting. The email client at the other end (Yahoo, others) choose(?) not to use that the font information, as Gmail is able to. Yahoo in particular, it is able to display with my specified font correctly, but when in compose-reply, it does not use it.

08-09-2011, 05:02 AM

Originally Posted by chas_m

You do not have any control over what fonts other people have on their computers. Apple tries to stick to a fairly universal set of fonts, but again what the receiver sees is very dependent on what they have. You have no control over it beyond some basic things like what is bold and what isn't bold, colours etc.

Here's a tip that has nothing to do with your problem, but will make your life better: uncheck the box (pictured in your post) that says "Display Remote Images in HTML Messages." Here's why:

1. HTML messages are generally spam. But if you get non-spam HTML messages (like let's say Apple emails), you can turn the images on for that message only. HTML code (particularly invisible "spacers") are one of the ways spammers can tell that you've looked at their message, which makes them (of course) send you more.

2. While it's not possible for malicious HTML code to do any harm to your computer or expose any of your information, it DOES tell the sender your IP address (this relates to point #1 above), which means that if you have remote images disables, you CAN safely examine spam or suspected spam messages without letting the spammer know.

3. By not loading all those images, all your email will flow in faster. Again, you always have the option of loading images when you WANT to on a message-by-message basis, but you're protected the rest of the time.

I think this is the single best reason why I tend to get far less spam than anyone I know.

Thanks Chas...Never heard of that before