Font changes on Microsoft Outlook

Just wanted to jump in here and say that our startup is going to have to switch from Mail.app to Entourage because of this issue......

You are just talking to other users like yourself here. If you haven't already, please convey all this to Apple directly via their feedback link.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Mail's preferences have no effect at all on what is seen at the other end. They only relate to local display. To have your font signaled in an outgoing message you must do it for each message individually in the New Message Pane, use custom stationery, or set up a signature in your desired font and start your text in its first line.

Thanks for all the help in this thread. Screenshots really help!

I am one of the billions of people who can't understand why Apple do it this way. If I could get my head around the logic of not letting people choose their font simply, I might realise why Apple are right and their way is better. But I can't. Anyone?

Here is where it gets really illogical:

1) You decide to live with Apple not sending any font info, and decide to live with whatever default font the Outlook user has chosen to view your message in. Great.
2) Oh dear, your signature obeys completely different rules. It does retain its formatting, and therefore looks different to the body of your email.

Is there a way to get the body and the signature to work in harmony and always display the same? Not as far as I can tell!

Again, if anyone can help me understand the logic of Apple's thinking and why you'd want a different body and signature, then great, I'll go with it.

Just thinking about this I'm really not sure it is 'by design' to have your specified default message font ignored. I read in another thread that Mail sends a malformatted font tag, which is 'fixed' if you change the font when you are composing the message.

*Also, why does the signature creation window have the option "+Always match my default message font+" if there is no such thing as a default message font?!!*

I think this is a long-time unfixed bug in Mail. +To that end, does anyone know if it has been fixed in Snow Leopard?+

Not fixed in Snow Leopard--that's what brought me here in the first place. I switched my Exchange account from Entourage to Mail.app, and saw my messages appearing as Times New Roman 12 pt on coworkers' computers.

I read in another thread that Mail sends a malformatted font tag, which is 'fixed' if you change the font when you are composing the message.

You can check that all for yourself by doing View > Message > Raw Source on messages you send.

I don't think Mail sends any font tags at all if you just rely on Preferences settings, but check it out if you want.

I have been trying that method, but when you type your body within the first line of your signature, it becomes impossible to make single words italic! Argh, can't seem to win here at all. Nice job Apple - completely crazy!

I am having the exact same problem. Looks very unprofessional have have your e-mails reformat randomly at the Microsoft Outlook End. Apple has got to fix this issue even if they claim it is not an Apple Mail issue. Reality is that Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express are the most common business mail clients out there and Mac need to co-mingle properly with them. C'mon Apple, I have been waiting for a fix to this since Tiger was released. Let our Mac's be useful in the business workplace!

Just wanted to jump in here and say that our startup is going to have to switch from Mail.app to Entourage because of this issue. We simply cannot have our emails looking unprofessional when going to clients.

Sure, losing a bit of faith from a startup might seem small, but the Apple brand takes a hit in the business world when it cannot play nice with what 90% of businesses use -- Outlook.

It's just unacceptable that there has to be a workaround to this issue. Apple, in my experience, just works. They've got to fix this if they want to continue to expand into enterprise.

Unless you change the message font to something other than your default font, the font information is not written into the message and is treated as plain text.

That should then stick?

Yes. You can check for yourself what font is being signaled to the recipient by doing View > Message > Raw Source on the copy in your Sent folder.