Font & Other Problems with Outlook Compatibilty (Details)
First, I'd like to say I'm a new user, "switcher" if you will. Got my first Mac about 2 weeks ago in the form of a Mac mini. I love pretty much everything about OS X, but I've found some major issues with Mail 2 and Microsoft Outlook compatibility. I've read some other posts here on the subject and done some looking and testing and here's what I've found:
Font Problems:
An HTML formatted email sent to a Microsoft Outlook user fails to display proper default font formatting. (eg. email contains Arial 11, but the Outlook user sees Times New Roman).
Cause & Work Around:
From what I've found, when Mail creates the HTML formatted email, it fails to cast the font face within the font tags themselves. For example:
(FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3")
When the tag should be:
(FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3")
However, as others have pointed out in this forum, this only seems to occur when the font used in the body of the email is the same as the default font set in Mail preferences. So a simple work around is to set the default font to one you don't want to use (say, Helvetica), then while writing your email, set the font type to another (say Arial), thus this seems to kick Mail into casting the font face type.
Not a great answer, but hey, better than a kick in the teeth I suppose. I for one hope that Apple can address this problem, as this is holding me back from switching my work email to Mail (I'm trying to turn off my PC you know).
Another odd problem related to multiple space characters:
I have also found that when using multiple spaces between characters in an HTML formatted message (such as tabs), Mail uses a SPAN tag to represent the space. eg:
(SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.7px;") (/SPAN)
With the gap representing the mutiple spaces. I have found that when the Outlook user (at least in the versions of 2003 I can test on) views the email, they see a bunch of "???????" where the space is. This appears to be more a problem with Outlook itself as multiple spaces show up fine in Hotmail etc. However, as Outlook is the "standard" business email program, I hesitate sending clients email know that they may see "?????" when I intend there to be, well, nothing.
If some good soul out there can reproduce my mutiple space problem, it would be much appreciated, as I would like to know I'm not on crack. In my mind, Mail should use more strict "  " tags to represent multiple spaces. eg:
(SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.7px;") , , , ,(/SPAN)
So there are the two main HTML related problems I can find, and the HTML formatting behind them. I look forward to comments and maybe we can refine the problem down so, by some miricle, the good ol' Apple engineers can fix 'er up. 'Cause I may own a PC-only computer company, but darned if I want to go home and use them.
Norm.
Font Problems:
An HTML formatted email sent to a Microsoft Outlook user fails to display proper default font formatting. (eg. email contains Arial 11, but the Outlook user sees Times New Roman).
Cause & Work Around:
From what I've found, when Mail creates the HTML formatted email, it fails to cast the font face within the font tags themselves. For example:
(FONT class="Apple-style-span" size="3")
When the tag should be:
(FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3")
However, as others have pointed out in this forum, this only seems to occur when the font used in the body of the email is the same as the default font set in Mail preferences. So a simple work around is to set the default font to one you don't want to use (say, Helvetica), then while writing your email, set the font type to another (say Arial), thus this seems to kick Mail into casting the font face type.
Not a great answer, but hey, better than a kick in the teeth I suppose. I for one hope that Apple can address this problem, as this is holding me back from switching my work email to Mail (I'm trying to turn off my PC you know).
Another odd problem related to multiple space characters:
I have also found that when using multiple spaces between characters in an HTML formatted message (such as tabs), Mail uses a SPAN tag to represent the space. eg:
(SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.7px;") (/SPAN)
With the gap representing the mutiple spaces. I have found that when the Outlook user (at least in the versions of 2003 I can test on) views the email, they see a bunch of "???????" where the space is. This appears to be more a problem with Outlook itself as multiple spaces show up fine in Hotmail etc. However, as Outlook is the "standard" business email program, I hesitate sending clients email know that they may see "?????" when I intend there to be, well, nothing.
If some good soul out there can reproduce my mutiple space problem, it would be much appreciated, as I would like to know I'm not on crack. In my mind, Mail should use more strict "  " tags to represent multiple spaces. eg:
(SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 10.7px;") , , , ,(/SPAN)
So there are the two main HTML related problems I can find, and the HTML formatting behind them. I look forward to comments and maybe we can refine the problem down so, by some miricle, the good ol' Apple engineers can fix 'er up. 'Cause I may own a PC-only computer company, but darned if I want to go home and use them.
Norm.
