Saving customized email stationary templates

I cannot save stationary either... It is greyed out!
When I do a permissions repair It is filled with the following... and Disk Utility can't seem to repair it. I ran it multiple times.

ACL found but not expected on "Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/Photos/Contents/Resource s/Air Mail.mailstationery/Contents/Resources/banner.jpg".
ACL found but not expected on "Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/Photos/Contents/Resource s/Air Mail.mailstationery".

Just a reminder that Apple doesn't monitor these forums so we need to send feedback to Apple.

I was told by a worker at the Apple Store that Apple buried the templates in the system to make the templates hard to tamper with for security reasons– i.e. spreading malicious code in html email. They really need to integrate this capability with Pages. Doesn't seem like this would be that hard.

I've had success with creating html pages in Go Live, uploading the pages to the web, then using Max Bulk Mailer for group emails that reference the web page. They've obviously made sending this type of email amazingly simple. Now allow the masses to design their own templates and make a library available, like iCards are now where you can choose from a bunch of categories or make your own easily.

I've had limited success as follows. Create a basic custom template by opening the "new message" window and save as template. Any junk in text is fine. This will assign a unique ID to it. Copy the ID. Next, go to the canned templates folder and copy any one, and replace the custom one you just created, then edit the template using the copied ID. The process is fairly simple after that by opening the package contents, and copying all the html components out into a temporary folder, editing them, and the putting them back. Remember to update the contents.plist file with the real file names and folder locations.

The dynamic picture feature seems to work for me. I'm still fooling around with the exact process but this seems to work. Maybe others will have greater success.

Good info - editing the plist was the step that was evading me... now I have a workflow...

ok, I've confirmed that you can take the Plist from one of the existing templates and use it as the basis of your custom one. Basically you need to merge the two using the template ID of the Newly created template (the customer one) that you created from the compose window. I just copied all of the canned one over the custom plist, then added the missing entries like "Is User Created", Subject, and Headers (if you added custom To and Cc to your base template). Then copy over the original custom template and it should work fine. It did for me. I didn't edited the images and left the content.html file alone but I suppose you could do that too.

Would appreciate it if you could share your workflow when you're done.

Thanks,

Ok, I have successfully taken a default custom template as I indicated and was able to get it working so that you can drag a different photo and it works fine. I created a basic halloween template editing the resources in photoshop cs3. then replaced the original custom.mailstationery file with the edited version.

I'm happy to email you my package file if you want to respond with an address.

Creating Custom Mail Stationery (Leopard/Mac OS 10.5)

Contributed by: Scott Slattery, 31 Oct. 2007

*Creating a custom search to easily locate all your stationery files is helpful*. This will make things considerably easier as you add and modify stationery files and due to the fact that system and user stationery files are stored in different locations.
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1. From Finder open Find ( ⌘-F)
2. Search “This Mac” should be selected.
Search parameters should be
“System files” “Include” (you will have to select “other” then search for “system files”.
“Kind” is “Other” “Mail Stationery”
3. Save Search as “Mail Stationery” and check “Add To Sidebar”
Now you can easily select your saved search (Mail Stationery) from the sidebar to locate all your stationery files.

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*Select a Stationery Format you want to mimic and customize.*
Decide which system stationery you want to copy and make note of it. I selected Birthday/Banners because I wanted something with a single photo on it.

*Create a basic (default) stationery which will be edited*
1. From Mail app select “New Message” and minimal text in the body. Note that adding a subject, and recipient (To and Cc) will cause additional properties to be written to the template that can be edited later if you want your template to automatically include addressing and subject information but it is not essential.
2. Select File->Save As Stationery... (eg. I used name “Custom1”)
3. Close Mail App (otherwise it will crash when you edit it’s files).
4. Mail will create a stationery package at: ~/Library/Application Support/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/Custom/Contents/Resources/Cust om1.mailstationery
Don’t edit this package directly, copy it to your WorkFolder first.
5. Open ~/WorkFolder/Custom1.mailstationery by pressing Control-click and selecting “Show package contents”.
The first folder in the package is “Contents”. Drag it out of the package into it’s parent folder (~/WorkFolder). This this will make editing considerably easier.
6. Drill down into ~/WorkFolder/Contents until you get to the Resources folder.
7. Edit “Description.plist”. Double-click and it will open in Property List Editor.
You will need to merge the contents of this “custom” property file with one of the system stationery plist’s (the one you selected).
8. From Finder go to: /Library/Application Support/Apple/Mail/Stationery/Apple/Contents/Resources/Birthday/Contents/Resour ces/Banners.mailstationery (assuming you chose the same system stationery I did). If you did not, use the custom search you created (above) and use the path identified in the path bar for your specific stationery file.
9. Copy Existing System stationery file into your ~/WorkFolder. This way there is no danger of corrupting or deleting the original system file.
10. Merge Results. This is most easily accomplished by editing the newly copied system stationery file (~/WorkFolder/systemstationeryfile.mailstationery) while referencing the default one created for you in your home folder that you copied into your work folder. The key item is to be sure to copy the “Stationery ID” from the custom stationery into the copy of the system stationery you saved in /workfolder.
11. Update the respective properties in Description.plist to ensure they match the name of your custom stationery.
12. Edit the existing images and the content.html ensuring you cange the title tag to “Custom”. I also used Photoshop to ensure all the images I replaced were identically sized as the original ones, keeping the image sizes (kb) approximately the same or smaller. This may not be an issue but I can't hurt.
13. After all your edits are complete, copy the “Contents” folder back into the root of the package within your working folder, then copy the package over the original Custom1.mailstationery package. The name must be the same as the custom name you selected since that's the name associated with the stationery ID you altered in the description.plist.
14.Open Mail App and your new template “Custom1” should appear under the Custom category.

Best of luck, this worked for me. Maybe someone can simplify it but the crucial steps are identified here.

Message was edited by: Scott Slattery

Well I got the stationary customized and saved in a few less step's than above.
1. Open the stationary that you want to customize
2. Customize it on how you want it to look. "I just added 3 pictures, header, date, and sig.
3. Now send it to your self. You can't "save as stationary" yet
4. Now go to your "send items" and find the email you just sent with you customizations.
5. Highlight just the stationary template portion of the email.
6. Select copy
7. Start new email
8. Edit paste "your template"
9. Yeah "Save as Stationary"

It looked like what Goshia recommended in Nov. 6th posting would work. My newly created template did save in Custom Stationery, but when I tried to use it, I could not open it in the mail composing pane. It did highlight in the Custom folder, but would not open by clicking, double clicking or dragging. It did look so promising. Any more help, Goshia - please!
Geraldine