I write in Arial - It arrives as Times New Roman

I am pretty sure that what happens is that it composes an HTML document to represent what you type and format and sends that, as an attachment, along with a plain text version of the same.

You can verify what is going on by just sending yourself a message with a special font, size, and color and doing View > Message > Raw Source on the copies in your Sent folder or Inbox. You should find multipart messages, with plain text and html parts (no attachments).

I hope to be able to definitively tell someone like our poor original poster precisely how to get a formatted e-mail to display properly in Outlook et al.

From answering similar questions in the past, my current best advice on how to do that would be to make sure you do your formatting in the New Message pane (not via settings in Preferences), and make sure the font you choose is different than what you have set in the Preferences.

Or use custom stationary. Unfortunately you also need to select that for each message.

Some earlier threads of possible interest:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6553359&#6553359
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6836697&#6836697
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6747736&#6747736

etresoft wrote:
I wrote the following bugs against Apple Mail.

And Apple has responded.

Apple Mail should use CSS for HTML messages instead of deprecated HTML tags - Enhancement

Engineering has determined that this issue behaves as intended based on the following information:

Mail uses font tags instead of CSS for compatibility. There are still quite a few email clients that don't handle CSS properly.

We consider this issue closed. Thank you for taking the time to notify us of this issue.

Apple Mail does not specify font style when sending HTML messages - UI/Usability

This is behaving correctly. Mail tries not to specify any font information in the message that the sender didn't explicitly set, so that the receiver has as much leeway as possible to display the message the way they want to. This is especially helpful for users who need to use a particular font size and/or face because of poor eyesight, but almost all users prefer to read messages in the font of their own choosing.

We consider this issue closed. Thank you for taking the time to notify us of this issue.

No answer yet on these:

Apple Mail "Rich Text" is confusing - UI/Usability
Apple Mail should specify fallback fonts in HTML messages - Enhancement

So, if you don't like the way Apple Mail behaves, your only option is to send feedback to Apple or switch to a different e-mail client.

How an email looks on the receivers side is pretty much up to the settings on the receiver's machine. For instance, if your recipient doesn't have arial on his/her machine, would you prefer they could not see the message?

You can go someway to controlling things using html mail, but even then, that depends on the settings on the receivers machine too. For instance, I hate html mail, and have my Mail set to not display it, so you'd be wasting your time sending it to me.

You have your inbox set to display in arial, so me sending you an email in Times would be a waste of er... Times, right?

The bottom line is that you decide how email looks on your machine and I decide how it looks on mine. There really isn't a whole lot you can do about it.

Regards

TD

Hi Terence,

I'm also curious about this e-mail font issue: Should I understand from what you say that all incoming mail will be received in a fixed font according to the recipients' settings?

Keith

In my settings I have set arial as the standard font

Mail.app preference settings are irrelevant to what the recipient will see. To influence that you must choose the font, size, color etc via the buttons in the New Message pane for each outgoing message. Plus it may be necessary to have the font you set in Preferences different than what you set in New Message (a bug). Or else use custom stationery.

It is actually quite a bit more complicated than that. If you compose a rich text or html e-mail message and send it, the receiver will get the following:

1) Your rich text message
2) A plain text version of your message

Chances are, the rich text version will display as you expect it to, more or less. Some e-mail clients do a better job at this than others. Some savvy users don't want to see all your fancy fonts and colors and are able to turn it off. It won't hurt anything to compose rich message and it just might inspire to recipient to upgrade their e-mail client so they can see them.

The plain text version of your message has no formatting. It is for those people whose e-mail clients can't do anything fancy. It is also handy for automated systems that process e-mail. Under Message -> View (I think) you can see all of the message alternatives in your own incoming e-mails. In addition, you can view the "raw text" of any e-mail message. That might be enlightening.

This is a major problem for Mac users sending email for business to PCs. One must have confidence that the message will look presentable and not goofy -- which it often does. (Not only is Times Roman substituted, but I can assure you that sizing can be changed, making it look like childish shouting.)

In following this discussion string, it's incorrect that the problem is with the settings on the PC side in Outlook. PCs sending Arial to other PCs in HTML don't get fonts substituted to Times Roman, as they do with Mail.

I've tried the 'workarounds' suggested in terms of making Preferences be the correct font or NOT the correct font as recommended, yet the problem still exists, at least for me.

One Mac Genius at a store pulled down the Mail Format menu and felt the problem was the Macs have option of Rich Text but not true HTML as with Windows Outlook menu options. Could this what's causing the issue?

If Mail can't correctly play nice with the world of Outlook, I've got to (gulp) use a Windows-oriented email program on my Mac.

I've tried the 'workarounds' suggested in terms of making Preferences be the correct font or NOT the correct font as recommended, yet the problem still exists, at least for me.

So you say you have set the font in the New Message pane via the Fonts button, and it's a different font than what you have in Preferences, and it was not displayed at the other end? I don't see how that could happen unless the other end was unable to read html for some reason. If you would like to repeat such a message to me, I'd like to check the code (tom at bluesky dot org).

One Mac Genius at a store pulled down the Mail Format menu and felt the problem was the Macs have option of Rich Text but not true HTML as with Windows Outlook menu options. Could this what's causing the issue?

No. Rich Text is just the term used in the menu for html email. Anyone can see what Mail is actually producing by doing View > Message > Raw Source on a message in their Sent folder. That a Genius would suggest this is really disappointing.

If Mail can't correctly play nice with the world of Outlook, I've got to (gulp) use a Windows-oriented email program on my Mac.

That may be the best course if you cannot get the results you need. Thunderbird or Entourage are the most common alternatives, plus I've seen a new one called Outspring Mail.

LOswego wrote:
This is a major problem for Mac users sending email for business to PCs. One must have confidence that the message will look presentable and not goofy -- which it often does. (Not only is Times Roman substituted, but I can assure you that sizing can be changed, making it look like childish shouting.)

We use Lotus Notes in our business and you're lecturing me about Mac e-mail looking goofy 🙂

In following this discussion string, it's incorrect that the problem is with the settings on the PC side in Outlook. PCs sending Arial to other PCs in HTML don't get fonts substituted to Times Roman, as they do with Mail.

Sorry, but the problem really is on the PC side. Apple Mail has been a standards-compliant mail program from day 1 while none of the major PC mail clients (Lotus, Outlook, AOL) have ever been. Many of the new "HTML" mail features in Apple Mail are an attempt to try to get fancy, formatted e-mail messages across to PCs that have never supported the official ways to do fancy, formatted MIME e-mail. Unfortunately, there is nothing standard about that.

I've tried the 'workarounds' suggested in terms of making Preferences be the correct font or NOT the correct font as recommended, yet the problem still exists, at least for me.

One Mac Genius at a store pulled down the Mail Format menu and felt the problem was the Macs have option of Rich Text but not true HTML as with Windows Outlook menu options. Could this what's causing the issue?

If Mail can't correctly play nice with the world of Outlook, I've got to (gulp) use a Windows-oriented email program on my Mac.

What is the difference? Mail is supposed to be about content instead of fancy presentation. If you have something that you want to look a particular way, send it as a PDF attachment or something. E-mail has inherently very weak support for any sort of formatting. That is just the way things are. For all you know, Outlook is looking at the internal header that identifies the software used to compose the message and saying "Whoa! The sender didn't use Outlook to compose this message. It could be spam or a virus that could crash Windows. I'll need to substitute all the fonts and disable style sheets to ensure the e-mail is safe". Granted, this is unlikely, but certainly possible.

What is even more likely is that these businesses have various PC spam filters in place that munge up all the data before it even shows up on Outlook. This is very likely and certainly not Apple's fault.

Your best bet is just to avoid fancy fonts in e-mail messages if you aren't sure they will look good on the other end. Send PDF or DOC attachments instead.

Tom Gewecke wrote:
So you say you have set the font in the New Message pane via the Fonts button, and it's a different font than what you have in Preferences, and it was not displayed at the other end? I don't see how that could happen unless the other end was unable to read html for some reason. If you would like to repeat such a message to me, I'd like to check the code (tom at bluesky dot org).

You could also get that raw e-mail data, redact the actual addresses, and post it here between two lines of:
{ code }
{ code }
without the spaces. Just keep it as short as possible.

No. Rich Text is just the term used in the menu for html email. Anyone can see what Mail is actually producing by doing View > Message > Raw Source on a message in their Sent folder. That a Genius would suggest this is really disappointing.

Unfortunately, Apple and others have tried to "dumb down" e-mail to avoid confusing people. I understand how they feel. I know the MIME standard well and it is quite confusing. There are actually two different kinds of "rich text" formats in the MIME e-mail standard. They having nothing to do with HTML e-mail. HTML e-mail is just some inline "text/html" content in an e-mail message. The reason HTML e-mail became popular is that everyone had so much trouble with the actual MIME rich text. Unfortunately, various software vendors (such as Microsoft and AOL) don't exactly have a stellar history of conforming to HTML standards either.

We Mac users have had to "dumb down" our web pages and e-mail messages for years so that PCs don't get confused. This is normal and they way it has always been.

Many of the new "HTML" mail features in Apple Mail...

They are perhaps no longer so "new," since people have been using them for nearly 3 years now.

We Mac users have had to "dumb down" our web pages and e-mail messages for years so that PCs don't get confused.

That's true, but Apple could easily improve Mail's usefulness for those who want to use html by a) fixing the bug related to need to select a different font than what is in Preferences, and b) providing working settings for outgoing default font and size in the Composing preferences pane.

Tom Gewecke wrote:
They are perhaps no longer so "new," since people have been using them for nearly 3 years now.

I rarely send "rich" messages and, when I do, I send them to Mac users, so I've never noticed anything. I have seen some fairly recent posts that say until Leopard, Apple Mail didn't send HTML mail. I will have to look into this to verify.

We Mac users have had to "dumb down" our web pages and e-mail messages for years so that PCs don't get confused.

That's true, but Apple could easily improve Mail's usefulness for those who want to use html by a) fixing the bug related to need to select a different font than what is in Preferences, and b) providing working settings for outgoing default font and size in the Composing preferences pane.

I have two issues with this. First of all, don't tell me. If there is a problem with Apple Mail, file a bug report with Apple.

Secondly, how is the current behavior of Apple mail any different than how HTML works with any browser in the world? When I compose HTML, the text is rendered in whatever font my HTML editor happens to be in. For me, this is some monospaced font in Xcode or MacVim. Then, the user sees it in whatever font they want to use. That's not a bug. I can force the font to be what I want, and that works fine (although a savvy user can override that). You are telling me Apple Mail works the same way. Ergo, it works properly. There may be people who don't understand how that works, and that is a different issue.

It might be a good idea to have outgoing message format be more prominently displayed and more easily controlled. If so, file a bug report with Apple. Just remember that the category for this is "enhancement".

I will look into Leopard and Tiger e-mail settings and report back to this thread. I can't tell anything from where I'm at now.

I have seen some fairly recent posts that say until Leopard, Apple Mail didn't send HTML mail. I will have to look into this to verify.

Apple Mail started sending html with Tiger, in April 2005. In Panther, it used .rtf instead. I have all these OS's running. Tiger's html also used mixed encodings, which, combined with bugs in Outlook, caused the annoying "Chinese" problem when accented characters were in the text.

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/woutlook.html

I think Apple got rid of the mixed encodings in Leopard, essentially fixing the problem by accommodating Outlook's bug.

I can force the font to be what I want

My point was only that many people would like to do that "forcing" in Preferences and have it apply to all their outgoing messages, because they want all their business communications to look the same. Mail doesn't allow that, and you have to set everything for each new message individually. That's not a bug, of course, just an inconvenience. For some it's big enough to make them use another app.

I personally don't care about either the bug or the inconvenience, but they help explain why some users come here with questions like the OP's.

Tom Gewecke wrote:

I have seen some fairly recent posts that say until Leopard, Apple Mail didn't send HTML mail. I will have to look into this to verify.

Apple Mail started sending html with Tiger, in April 2005. In Panther, it used .rtf instead. I have all these OS's running. Tiger's html also used mixed encodings, which, combined with bugs in Outlook, caused the annoying "Chinese" problem when accented characters were in the text.

It is going to be a couple of days before I get a chance to look at it. I'm now officially interested, so I want to know definitively what is going on just for my own sake.

But I am reasonably confident that it doesn't "send html" and that it never used .rtf. I am pretty sure that what happens is that it composes an HTML document to represent what you type and format and sends that, as an attachment, along with a plain text version of the same. Mail clients (some of them) are smart enough to just render the HTML as the message and ignore the plain text when they see a message with a single HTML attachment with an alternative plaintext. There is a way to send formatted text as "richtext" entities and that is how the Panther Mail worked, but that is not the same as RTF or HTML.

The current "standard" is, in fact, just a mess-o-hacks because Microsoft and AOL couldn't figure it out. Apple was years ahead of everyone with formatted e-mail way back in the Cyberdog years. Unfortunately, the e-mail standard essentially died and now Apple is working to keep up with the hacks. Due to the e-mail format disaster, I stopped writing e-mail software years ago. That was a good idea because the situation sure hasn't improved. That is why I say I'm "reasonably confident" and "pretty sure" because I haven't checked all the standards in a long time.

I think Apple got rid of the mixed encodings in Leopard, essentially fixing the problem by accommodating Outlook's bug.

Yep. They dumbed it down and hacked it up.

I personally don't care about either the bug or the inconvenience, but they help explain why some users come here with questions like the OP's.

I don't either. I also don't think that the average user really cares about my explanations or my annotated rant/history of e-mail standards. They want answers.

But I am interested because Apple Mail questions are pretty common and I would like to know in detail what is going on. Plus, I hope to be able to definitively tell someone like our poor original poster precisely how to get a formatted e-mail to display properly in Outlook et al. Look for lengthy reply from me, maybe sometime tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I can come with with a solution with a little experimentation and analysis.

LOswego wrote:
This is a major problem for Mac users sending email for business to PCs. One must have confidence that the message will look presentable and not goofy -- which it often does. (Not only is Times Roman substituted, but I can assure you that sizing can be changed, making it look like childish shouting.)

That is why anybody that knows anything about email would never use it as a sales pitch. It is 100% up to the receiver's email client how the message is displayed. No matter what you use on the sending end, I can configure my client to make it look completely different. *You have no control over that. Period.*

Since we use the virus-ridden Windows environment, my company prevents all email from displaying as HTML by default. If you want to view a message the way the sender intended it, you have to click the non-intuitive, shaded bar in the header to view as HTML. Also, any white space is stripped from the messages, so no line spacing gets transferred, regardless of whether you view it as HTML or not. As more and more attacks are made via embedded html code, more companies will go this route.

If your message is that important, you shouldn't be sending it as an email.