the way emails look in Thunderbird when viewed on a PC

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I am using a Macbook and Thunderbird. My emails when sent to a PC arrive on the PC end in Courier no matter font I select or whether fixed width fonts or variable fonts are used. It must be some setting that I don't know about.

Be gentle with me. I was on PCs for 18 years before this.
 
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Under Thunderbird, preferences , display, look under fonts.
 
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Thanks for your message about the fonts. I have tried that and the emails look fine on a Mac. It's when they are sent to a PC that the formatting defaults to a Courier typeface on the PC.
 
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Thanks for your message about the fonts. I have tried that and the emails look fine on a Mac. It's when they are sent to a PC that the formatting defaults to a Courier typeface on the PC.

Is this the case on every PC you send email to? Or just the one? Some mail clients may default to courier if you are sending a plain-text message, and some mail clients may be set to strip the html and only display a plain text message using Courier.
 
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I would check your settings in Thunderbird's address book for the person you are sending to. There is a setting that controls whether Thunderbird will send HTML or just plain text. If you have it set to Plain Text, that is all it will send, no matter what you use for composition.

To check this, go the Thunderbird address book, select the person in question, Select Properties and find the box entitled "Prefers to receive messages formatted as:". Set the drop box value to HTML.

If you don't have an address book entry for the person in question, this might be a good time to create one. Create on, set it up for HTML and try it out. I am guessing that this will resolve your issue.

Let us know how it goes.
 
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It does this on all three PCs that I have checked and those PCs are receiving html and images and text in the font it was sent from a PC.

I also tried using the Mac email programme (rather than Thunderbird) and it made no difference.

In Thunderbird composition I have checked the "compose message in html" and always check again that the message is sent in html.
 
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Just a dumb question. What OS version and what email client are you using on the PC? Is the email client set to be able to display HTML?
 
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Leopard on the Mac and MS Outlook on the PCs. The PC client can receive HTML.

I have changed the HTML aspect in the address book and it seems to have worked on the PC that I checked. I guess this means that I need to create an address book entry each time I send a new email. Thanks for your help.
 
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Later: If you select options and format once you have opened a new email window and then select HTML then you do not need to bother with adding this to the address book.
 
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Did you resolve the issue? This sort of suggests you did? I remember fighting with this with Outlook 2000 some while ago. Turns out it would not accept HTML, just RTF. Could that have been the cause?
 
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The problem is sorted out but for no particular reason. I made the changes suggested above relating to HTML, and it worked. Then I undid the changes and it carried on working. Thanks for your help.

(OPTIONS - FORMAT- "AUTODETECT" is checked in new emails but that was always being done)
 

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