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Old 08-28-2004, 10:29 AM   #1
Vivid
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Question Mac mail fonts?

I'm having a dilema with mail's fonts.

I send rich text mail, which as part of the company I work for's rules the body must be Arial, black in colour and size 12 whilst the signiture must be Tahoma size 10 in grey.

Now on the Mac it looks lovely, laid out as it is supposed to be with all the correct fonts, however when it is sent to a windows machine it comes out as the default windows font "times new roman" size 12 ignoring all formatting that mail on the mac has put in.

Is there any way around it? I'm getting fed up of having to compose important company mail on my mac, send it to myself on my windows pc, reformat it with the correct fonts and then send it to the person I want it to go to. It's doing my head in!
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Old 08-28-2004, 01:49 PM   #2
stevierar
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I'm not sure - but I think Outlook Express.etc on Windows use HTML emails, they might not be able to understand the RTF?
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Old 08-31-2004, 06:52 AM   #3
Clytie
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No, it's not the RTF, pretty much all mailers can handle that.

It probably is a font problem: you can't insist that every viewer have the particular font you want them to use. That's why it's much safer to stick with the well-known font-families, as in writing html pages.

One way to get around this, but you'll may find that even business contacts may dislike html mail, is to make your signature into an image, and send the mail as html.

However, in general, html email is widely disliked, and many people don't allow it, so I'd recommend choosing a font which matches in general size and shape ones that come with the main systems. Custom fonts, which may be much smaller or larger than usual, simply get translated into the default system font, so 12point for your cute custom font isn't the same as 12pt TimesNewRoman, as you've seen.

You should be able to get a similar effect with a small version of a common font.

Good luck.

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Old 09-18-2004, 05:03 AM   #4
Vivid
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clytie
It probably is a font problem: you can't insist that every viewer have the particular font you want them to use. That's why it's much safer to stick with the well-known font-families, as in writing html pages.

Hmm, but in this case I'm using two fonts that I know are standard across most machines, and I know for a fact that I have them installed on all of the machines I've tested this on...

Any other ideas?
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Old 09-18-2004, 10:14 AM   #5
ulrichm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivid
I'm having a dilema with mail's fonts.

I send rich text mail, which as part of the company I work for's rules the body must be Arial, black in colour and size 12 whilst the signiture must be Tahoma size 10 in grey.

Now on the Mac it looks lovely, laid out as it is supposed to be with all the correct fonts, however when it is sent to a windows machine it comes out as the default windows font "times new roman" size 12 ignoring all formatting that mail on the mac has put in.

Is there any way around it? I'm getting fed up of having to compose important company mail on my mac, send it to myself on my windows pc, reformat it with the correct fonts and then send it to the person I want it to go to. It's doing my head in!

Which email client do you use on the WinBlows side? And if you send a correctly formated email from WinBlows to your Mac and you select "View -> Message -> Raw Source", you will see how the message is composed. Now you can compose one on your Mac and send it to the PC side. View it in Raw Source as well and compare the two. You might see differences which tell you why the PC is so ignorant.
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Old 10-15-2005, 03:28 PM   #6
tglinatsis
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Yep..Familiar

This problem is created, as far as I can tell, by mail.app - not any of the other clients.

When you change your default font in Mail Preferences, it appears to change the way you SEE incoming/outgoing messages, but doesn't include the font information with the message.

Try it: compose a message with your default settings, go to the recipient's machine (it CAN'T be mail.app on your machine), and read your message in Times New Roman. You'll notice, however, that your SIGNATURE retains your intended font.

Now, try it again, but compose your message, then manually select the text and change the font to your desired font.

Nothing with appear to change - except the recipient will now receive the correct font info.

Strange...I'd love to figure out this one.
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Old 08-28-2006, 06:24 PM   #7
hackeron
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2 years later, still a problem - We recently switched to Mac to realise all emails sent to clients have question marks and other weirdness when viewed in Outlook - anyone know of a solution?
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Old 08-28-2006, 09:36 PM   #8
styrafome
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Back when I still needed to compose a few HTML formatted e-mails once in a while, I kept a copy of Eudora around just to do that, because Eudora's formatting was predictable across clients and platforms.

The preview of Leopard included comments about Apple Mail that almost sounded like maybe Apple is finally going to do HTML mail right instead of using RTF which they inherited from NeXT Mail and is troublesome on the compatibility front.
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Old 02-11-2007, 08:09 PM   #9
jbarmer
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Any suggestions on this problem within Mail?

Does anyone have any solutions/workarounds for this within Mail? I can switch to Entourage, but would love to stay with Mail.

I'm baffled by the fact that when inserting my pre-formatted signature, it will look correctly formatted on the Windows side, yet the text of my message I type goes to that goofy TNRoman 12pt.

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Old 07-13-2007, 02:38 PM   #10
coumerelli
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Red face Whew! I figured it out! (I need to submit this as a hint! mwaa haa haaa!!!!!)

Quote:
Originally Posted by hackeron
2 years later, still a problem - We recently switched to Mac to realise all emails sent to clients have question marks and other weirdness when viewed in Outlook - anyone know of a solution?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jbarmer
Does anyone have any solutions/workarounds for this within Mail? I can switch to Entourage, but would love to stay with Mail.

I'm baffled by the fact that when inserting my pre-formatted signature, it will look correctly formatted on the Windows side, yet the text of my message I type goes to that goofy TNRoman 12pt.


Ok, so, to get rid?of the seemingly random question marks when you send an email to?an?outlook recipient and you are composing your emails using?"RTF"? don't EVER format your text "in-line" - but only when you are finished composing it. In other words...don't use apple-I to italicize a word while you are typing the word, and then hit apple-I again to turn off italics; just type your email all the way through, and then go back and change what you want to change by hitting apple-whatever. For some reason, when you format your text "in-line" (while you're typing) Mail.app adds "=A0" to the RTF/HTML part as seen from reading the raw info of the email - even from within my sent items in MAIL! check this out:
Quote:
I need a test email to see if I can get it to =
produce=A0<i>weird</i>=A0characters,=A0within the email from apple's =
mail To ANOTHER client EMAIL ACCOUNT. <b>LET'S</b>=A0see if this does it =
ok.

That's from an email I sent. Does this make sense? At all? All of those "=A0" become question marks to Outlook users (at least, in outlook 2000). This holds true even if you turn bold on and back off without typing anything, it seems. So, just wait till you're finished composing the email to emphasize your words.
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Old 07-13-2007, 05:48 PM   #11
tw
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you might submit that as a bug report to apple - I can't see any sense in it.
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Old 07-16-2007, 11:58 AM   #12
coumerelli
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Just did - Thanks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tw
you might submit that as a bug report to apple - I can't see any sense in it.


Problem ID: 5337297
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Old 07-26-2007, 02:03 PM   #13
oilnwine
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Oh I'm having the same problem with the question marks.. it drives me nuts! I know I can send the message using UTF-8 text encoding, but I don't know how to set that as default. I have to set it EVERY time I write or reply to an email....
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Old 07-27-2007, 09:13 AM   #14
coumerelli
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Quote:
Originally Posted by oilnwine
Oh I'm having the same problem with the question marks.. it drives me nuts! I know I can send the message using UTF-8 text encoding, but I don't know how to set that as default. I have to set it EVERY time I write or reply to an email....

In the comments in the hint I submitted (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...70719071212177) it's detailed in there. Open Terminal.app and put in a simple line of code (orange type in the referenced comment) and hit enter. Done.
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Old 01-04-2008, 04:16 PM   #15
llogique
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I've been having a similar problem, that apparently occurred when I would cut and paste into an email from other documents/sources (e.g. a Word Doc or from the internet). To fix the problem, I just changed all of my defaults (in Mail Preferences, Fonts & Colors) to Arial 12. Also, under Composing, Message Format - I selected Plain Text. The defaults were different fonts - Arial for one and Lucida for two, under Fonts & Colors, and Rich Text under Composing. Now when I send a message, it appears uniform. I hope this helps others. I wasn't even aware this was happening until someone responded to one of my emails letting me know there was a problem. Interestingly, when the response email came back, my original message still looked uniform in the email I received. So, my friend cut the text into a Word document, so that I could see what it was doing. In a single email, the font changed back and forth from Times New Roman 12, to Helvetica 12, to Arial 10, none of which were even my settings.
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Old 07-25-2008, 12:17 PM   #16
jstanfield
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What about when it's a font that both Macintosh and Windows share?

Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, and a few others are common to both operating system platforms. I send a message in Helvetica 12pt from Mac Mail, and CC my work account which is accessed through Outlook, it should appear as Helvetica 12, not Times New Roman.

Strangely, though, my signature (which is also Helvetica 12pt) appears correctly.

Why is there a mix-up when Outlook clearly sees the font in the signature, but not in the body of the message?
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Old 08-22-2008, 02:00 AM   #17
druidb
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Try this work-around...

http://screencast.com/t/pyNOJyhZ3mV

If anyone comes up with a better idea let me know.

Cheers
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Old 10-13-2008, 10:33 PM   #18
soetes
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Woaahh! This druidb is a smart cookie, hey?
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Old 03-29-2010, 02:28 PM   #19
Paganels
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Another 2 years later and still a problem - recently switched to Mac. Using Mac OX 10.6.2, Helvetica 12 in message text changes to Times New Roman, signature to Arial 10, which is normal as per font change between Mac OX and MS, but together look awfull.
Help needed!
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Old 05-19-2010, 01:22 PM   #20
hennesj
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Hi!
I am one of the very frustrated users trying to run a credible business on a MAC, only to find my messages look terrible on receipt in Outlook.

The tip by druidb above is as good as it gets (IMHO). BUT, beware. In-line edits, additions, bullets and numbering are all really unpredictable, even using his method. This is following literally hundreds of tests from my Mac to a PC running outlook.
So my only addition to druidb's tip is that unless all you've done is type (and carriage return), if you want to be doubly sure, change your text to a font and size to one different to the one you want, and then change it back again - as the final step before you send. This seems to 'reiterate' the font and size and sort it all out. Oh and btw, numbered lists simply don't format correctly, ever.

I really hope this helps.

My call to action is to post vociferous complaints to Apple - if they want to tackle the corporate market, this HAS TO GET FIXED!

Hope this helps.
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