MAIL. Saving to RTF/D strips attachments + changes font

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Level 1

18 points

MAIL. Saving to RTF/D strips attachments + changes font

Please can someone help me out with this problem I have been having, I think, since I changed to Leopard?

I have posted appeals for help here and in myriad other places over the last year or so and it yields nothing. One person on a forum who was kind enough to take an interest said they could not duplicate the problem with his system ( Leopard) and I assume many people have systems which are working and that it must be pilot error.

I have reinstalled the OS several times in an attempt to get back to how it should be and I think it did work okay briefly but cannot be certain that it was in all cases. Needless to say, after devoting a day last weekend to putting in a replacement OS I am back this weekend to having the same problem.

The problem is described like this:

I conduct much of my daily business using Mail. It involves the sending of rich text messages to clients and contractors etc, to which they reply and, when they reply quoting me, my words are in something like Times or Times NR 16pt, even though they left here as 11 pt Helvetica. If it were just this I could probably learn to live with it but, at the end of the business day, I save off messages from that day to their respective Project files as RTF or RTFD files. Here is where it gets really frustrating as when I look at the file in Text Edit later I find that the saving process has stripped out the attachments and converted my text to Times 16pt. The attachments are most usually PDF files which, if not too large, display in line or, if sizeable, are shown by the icon only. Usually it is displayed. This obviously makes for a ponderous problem with my workflow, which was ideal before this started happening. Furthermore, as I go back into files from the transition time, before I realised what was happening I find I have lost valuable information.

When I have a two or three page eMail with in line images I also occasionally need to print it off for a paper copy to go in the paper project file. I experience problems here very often too. In that in the print dialogue box it shows a small image of the document on the left and very often it shows (page) 1 of 1, when there are, say, three pages. I have a default setting of "keep the same apparent font size" but if I click through the rewrap and scale options the image on the left of the dialogue box changes and it shows the other pages, even if I then go back to "keep the same..." This is clearly a bug and I am wondering if this is what is affecting the saving process too.

I know there is a work around by printing the whole thing to PDF but it does not help if I want later to extract parts and it is not ideal and I am not sure I can wait until next autumn for Snow Leopard to sort this.

You may be sending JPEGS back and forth between two Macs and wonder what I am going on about but I surely cannot be the only person with this problem. I am running a 2.3 dual G5 with the latest version of everything. I have several print drivers for HP, Epson. Also one for Print Window (which keeps crashing - anyone know any good alternatives to Print Window?). Encoding is default.

Any words of comfort would be greatly appreciated and apologies for the lack of brevity.

Drew

G5 dual 2.3 + 4GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.4), G5, 30" Apple display, HP Z3100 GP + Epson SC3000, G4 PwrBk, iBook, iMac + 5500

Posted on Sep 13, 2008 3:35 AM

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Answer 1

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 14, 2008 3:13 PM in response to Drieu

my words are in something like Times or Times NR 16pt, even though they left here as 11 pt Helvetica.

I don't see this as a problem. If you're sending Rich Text messages, when you get a reply the font specified by the sender is what you should see, unless you don't have that font installed on your system. In that case, it should default to the font you chose for Fonts & Colors > Message Font.

as when I look at the file in Text Edit later I find that the saving process has stripped out the attachments and converted my text to Times 16pt.

The only time it would strip an attachment is if you did not choose to save the attachments as part of the RTF document. That is an option when you save an email in Mail and it's right in front of you, at least in 10.4.x, so it should also be there in 10.5.x. And if the attachments are single- or multi-page PDF files, I find them to be displayed in the TextEdit document, with a scrollbar for multi-page documents.

If the font changes in the TextEdit RTF document, that font is set in TextEdit's Preferences window. You should check to see if Times is the font currently specified.

I have a default setting of "keep the same apparent font size" but if I click through the rewrap and scale options the image on the left of the dialogue box changes and it shows the other pages, even if I then go back to "keep the same..."

I don't think that's a bug. Wordspacing and line wrapping is different on-screen than it is on paper due to the limited resolution of monitors. So Print Preview is rewrapping things based on what it knows about the fonts and their sizes and how they will actually appear on the printed page.

But either way, you're wasting time and creating a lot of unnecessary work for yourself by constantly reinstalling 10.5. That's not the problem, and it won't fix anything that you've described.

Mulder

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Answer 2

Drieu Author

Level 1

18 points

Sep 15, 2008 8:39 AM in response to Mulder

I appreciate you taking the time to reply to the problem but I have to say it is disappointing. If you read again what I wrote you will see why. I was trying to be exact and not leave too much open to interpretation or assumptions:

When I get a reply "my words" are in 16pt Times, the other party's are not.
It is a problem or I would not have mentioned it.
I am aware of how to set preferences.

Clearly the situation you describe is not the "only time" it would strip out attachments or I would not be here. I am aware there is an option to not save attachments and obviously would not select this if I wanted to save my attachments.

The fact that the preview only shows one page when there are, say three, unless I click through the options (in the style of giving it a kick) clearly makes this a bug. Maybe not a universal one but a consistent one here.

I am also well aware of how much time I have wasted on trying to resolve this problem and even more so today.

If anyone has any idea why this is happening I would be most grateful for some hints.
I should perhaps add that I have been working professionally with Apple Mac computers since 1990 and have more than a basic understanding of how to drive one.

Thanks

Drew

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Answer 3

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 15, 2008 8:57 AM in response to Drieu

I'm aware of your problem, but I have never heard of this happening to anyone before. Are you still running 10.5.2 as your profile indicates, or have you upgrade to 10.5.4? It could be that this is an issue that was addressed in the update.

Have you tried creating a new User Account to see if the problem can be replicated there? If it can, that would indicate the problem is system-wide, and not limited to your primary account.

If you want to use a brute force approach to your font problem with received emails with quoted text, you can change those to Plain Text by pasting this line into Terminal and pressing Enter:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

Then quit Terminal and restart Mail. From then on most, if not all of your emails will be in the Plain Text font you have chosen. If you ever want to reverse that command, paste it in again, replacing TRUE with FALSE.

Mulder

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Answer 4

Drieu Author

Level 1

18 points

Sep 16, 2008 6:30 AM in response to Mulder

Hi again Mulder. The OS I was using at time of writing was 10.5.4 but it is now 10.5.5, which I leapt on in the hope it was the magic bullet. Which it was not. In fact it has just given me another problem which I thought I was free of and that is the Mail icon in the dock showing I have several new unread messages which, of course, I do not.

I can dodge between RTF and Plain text without a problem but I cannot resolve the issue with the changing of the font and size of font. Nor can I resolve the issue of the stripping out of images or PDF attachments and I have been at this for many months and have stripped things back to the bone to try to overcome them as they do seriously interfere with my workflow. I expect that, as I seem to be a lone voice, this is a problem local to my machine but finding what is causing it is eluding me.

I did have a hint of a possibility when opening something in Safari recently and it showed for a second as 16 pt Times before changing to the set default. Which suggests there is an underlying machine or system default for html or quasi html output which the preferences over ride and my override is not working. The encoding in Mail is set to Auto though I have tried rotating through the options in the top bracket, to see if it makes a difference.

Thanks

Drew

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Answer 5

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 16, 2008 6:48 AM in response to Drieu

Here's what I would do:

If you haven't already done it since installing 10.5.5, use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions. Then create a new User Account and try setting up Mail to work there to see if the problem persists in that account. If it does, it's a system-wide problem.

Next, in your primary account, quit Mail if it's running. Then go to Home/Library/Preferences and remove the com.apple.mail.plist file to the Desktop. Restart Mail and setup your accounts again; Mail should find your existing mailboxes automagically. Test Mail to see if the problem persists.

If it continues, you should download Onyx and run the Maintenance and Cleaning routines. When that's done, try Mail again to see if things have improved or resolved themselves.

Mulder

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Answer 6

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 17, 2008 4:38 PM in response to Mulder

According to my contacts at Apple, the problem you describe with attachments not being saved with exported emails as RTF or Plain Text documents is a known bug; it is not addressed in the 10.5.5 update, either.

The only way to get around this bug is to export your emails in Original Format.

Mulder

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Answer 7

Sep 18, 2008 2:21 AM in response to Drieu

@ Mulder

to lend a little support: i'm involved in IT in the practice where i work and, though not a 'power user' by the standards of these boards, am also able to 'drive a Mac'.

the problem Drieu describes is one we are also experiencing on the 6-or-so Leopard machines we run here. needless to say, we don't have the problem on Tiger (i see that you and i both run 10.4.11). i am still using Tiger and have not directly experienced the text re-formatting issue but the attachments issue is very much live for us. i find it disappointing that Apple have not addressed this problem. i type this message from an iMac running OSX 10.5.4 and Mail.app v3.3.

i'm not sure if your last entry re permissions is intended to address the attachments issue or the fonts one, so please excuse if i post workarounds for the attachments one before testing it (you might clarify which it does?)

@ Drieu (2 workarounds, not a fix)

my sympathies. as we wait for a fix this problem we:

1. use 'Raw Message Source' as the format option under 'Save As...'.
pros this seems to default to including attachments rather than requiring that a box be ticked
cons it opens in Mail rather than, say, TextEdit. that assumes you're running 10.5. i think if you're on an earlier OS the .eml extension opens in Entourage (or, i assume, other 3rd party email apps) though i haven't tested this because i use;

2. use 'Rich Text Format' as the format option under 'Save As...', don't tick 'Include Attachments', and save the message and the attachments separately into a dedicated folder (i personally name a folder to match the subject line of the email or the name in our office system under which i'm filing it).
pros this leaves the attachments in individual folders so they show up in Spotlight searches etc.
cons time consuming and labour intensive. takes attachments out of sequence.

i'm acutely aware how often workarounds are posted to forums ('you shouldn't want to do that, what i do is...'). we too await *a fix from Apple*. i'll watch this board with interest.

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Answer 8

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 18, 2008 5:26 AM in response to Des Hourihane

Actually, I have tested saving attachments in RTFD format and I do not experience them being stripped from the RTF document, so I can't speak to your experience.

Mulder

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Answer 9

Sep 18, 2008 6:24 AM in response to Mulder

fair enough: there's hope.

can i assume you're talking about Leopard?
10.5.5 or earlier?
what version of Mail.app ?

i'm not sure how relevant these are but it'd help refine our understanding of the problem.

please understand i'm running 10.4.11 myself and am only 'dipping into' the problem other users are experiencing under 10.5 but immediately before my post this morning i tried both formats from a colleague's 10.5.4 setup (.eml & .rtfd) with success in the former and none in the latter.

got to say, if your contacts at Apple say it's a known bug, it seems an awfully fundamental one to leave hanging out there by revision 5! do they say it's limited to a particular setup? so far as i know, our experience in this office is that it affects all of the Leopard machines we have.

thanks for the assistance.

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Answer 10

Drieu Author

Level 1

18 points

Sep 18, 2008 6:50 AM in response to Des Hourihane

Thanks for your response; it is good to know that I am not a lone voice in the wilderness and also to hear that it is a known bug, which I assume someone has on their clip board for "things to fix soon". There is no really practical work round for me to use in my workflow, though on critically important items which might be needed for confirmation I have kept two copies, one being a PDF, though it is fiddly and time consuming, when the old system worked really well in a speedy efficient workflow.

I have tried everything I can including Mulder's helpful suggestions concerning Onyx. Incidentally, the only effect from using Onyx which was a noted change was that on re-boot the mouse cursor was frozen top left screen. On forcing a shut down and boot it was the same. Third time it was mobile again but no idea what happened, why and whether it created yet another rumple in the underlying system operation.

The thing which niggles is the combination of both the stripping of attachments AND the changing of font for my <body> text. The text looks fine when it leaves mail to go to someone over the ether but it seems they get my text (just the body) at 16pt Times (which is just so not me or the image I want to project to my clients). They reply and all their body text comes through as expected and all the headers are in Lucida or Helvetica as expected. I save off as RTF/D or RTF and the TextEdit file opens with the body in Times 16pt. The file is calling itself an RTFd, even though the images have gone.

I just got an eMail in from FileMaker which is the usual html only thing, like a web page. I save this to my desktop and it turns up as an RTF file (not RTFD) and when I open it, it is exactly as I saw in Mail before I loaded the pictures. i.e. a web page with place holders. So there is an inconsistency there which may be a clue.

I am also inclined to see Times 16pt as a clue. This is a default setting in web browser preferences ( I changed mine ).

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Answer 11

Sep 18, 2008 7:18 AM in response to Drieu

can't give any help with the font, i'm afraid (though we're architects too and i wouldn't touch Times with a barge-pole) as our first and most significant problem was the attachments.

once we noticed that we switched to a workaround fairly quickly, though not before some loss of important data.

most users have opted for the Raw Message Source as a save format which was worked around the problem (though created others if reading said saved files from 10.4 machines).

i do experience some problems with how my mail is received on correspondents systems (pretty much all Windows-based, i think). there are 2 types of problems i see regularly:

my own emails returned to me as replies with changed fonts. i have so far put this down to the default settings on their software (i send my emails in helvetica) and have assumed i cannot control enough of the outside variables. (i said i couldn't help. i didn't say i don't ever have the problem myself.) your posts suggest that the re-formatting was something you never suffered from before the upgrade to Leopard?

my own emails returned to me littered with � characters (little diamonds with question marks, in case this doesn't post!). they're most frequently seen in a returned signature for some reason but i've been through the process of saving my signature as plain text and converting back to .rtf before pasting it into the signature in the Mail.app preferences - what i call a sort of 'footbath' procedure - to no avail. the funny thing is that it's far from every email. i can't see a pattern to their appearance - they always replace a <space> but sometimes it's the second of two in a row, sometimes it's one on its own, sometimes preceding a link, +etc. etc.+ (think i need to start a separate thread under the 10.4 forums for that one).

you're not a lone voice; let's see if anyone answers.

Message was edited by: Des Hourihane

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Answer 12

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 18, 2008 7:24 AM in response to Des Hourihane

can i assume you're talking about Leopard?

No, I'm talking about Tiger, 10.4.11. I have never experienced this problem, and I did test for it after hearing about it for Leopard.

Apple Engineering doesn't say it's limited to a particular setup, so I presume it is just a bug in 10.5 itself. It's easy to say that it should have been fixed well before now or not even allowed to ship with that bug, but we don't know what effect some small changes in code may do to the rest of the OS, so we're not qualified to make a judgement. I would just keep reporting it as a bug, since the more people that do, the higher it will be on their priority list for bug fixes.

Mulder

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Answer 13

Sep 18, 2008 8:07 AM in response to Mulder

thanks.

don't mean to be too 'snippy' but we are posting this on a *Mac OS X v 10.5 Leopard > Mail and Address Book* board so the response 'i have not experienced this problem in OS X 10.4.11' is not a lot of use to us.

thanks for your time and attention all the same, i'll duly report it direct to Apple (though they are obviously already aware of it).

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Answer 14

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Sep 18, 2008 8:37 AM in response to Mulder

Yes, I'm aware of what forum we're in, but I did post about the specifics of this problem, my experiences with Tiger and the fact that it is a known bug in 10.5. My testing was designed to see if the problem was also in Tiger, but perhaps nobody experiencing it or reporting it.

Mulder

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Answer 15

Drieu Author

Level 1

18 points

Sep 23, 2008 10:28 AM in response to Des Hourihane

Des I have been wondering what the common aspects of the problem we share are. Forgive me if I am going over old ground. If there is a way to mail direct it may spare others having to read about this tangent to the topic but, on cursory examination, I cannot see a way to do that. My problem emerged with the use of Leopard. I cannot swear it was there from the outset but I suspect it was. Hitherto, with Tiger, there had not been a problem. It occurs on a PPC G5 using solely Mail for eMailing and TextEdit for reading the saved off items. If there are not many people suffering this problem I imagine it may be largely down to it being an unusual and perhaps a workflow Apple did not predict. I also imagine it may be the result of added factors like software. You say you are an architect and there may be some common aspect there, if not in software then the use of dongles? It might be worth comparing. As I understand it you use Tiger on your principal machine and there is not a problem but it is a problem on other of your machines running Leopard. Are these machines PPC or Intel? Drew.

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