Mail formats lost on receipt by Outlook

With respect (really), citing Mail as the good guy and outlook as the bad guy, and advising I post my important messages on the web or convert to pdf instead...well they don't really move things forward.

I think there may be a misunderstanding here. The problems you have are mainly caused by the fact that you cannot set the font seen at the other end, whether that is Outlook or any other mail client, using Mail > Preferences. You have to do this by selecting the text and setting the font in the New Message pane for each outgoing individually. Also you may need to choose a font which is different than what you have set in Mail > Preferences. Failing to do things this way results in an email message which contains no font info for the other end to read, so whatever is the local default (TNR for Outlook) is what gets used. Of course many users find having to set the font for each individual outgoing tedious or impractical.

Composing your email as part of your sig does seem to work for some people, but I have seen various reports that it can result messages with mixed fonts and sizes, so I no longer recommend it in general.

Users who want easy control of the fonts seen at the other end are best advised to use another email client, namely Entourage or Thunderbird.

There is no indication so far that Apple is considering changing Mail's behavior. It has worked the same way for 5 years now, and over that time many users have sent feedback asking for a fix. You can add yours here:

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

Outlook has difficulty rendering anything but Outlook. So, until they make an email client that works, try these workarounds. Also realize that their Exchange server settings and your ISP could mangle the message enough that Outlook can't handle it.

When you start a new message change the font to something different than your default font. Also, select the Attachment options to Always send windows friendly attachments and always insert attachments at end of message. If you are sending an attachment that you want the recipient to be able to save, use plain text format; otherwise, they won't be able to save it if it renders inline (like a jpg).

Some people "automate" the process of changing fonts by creating a default signature whose first line is the font they want to compose in (and different from the default font). They start the body of the message by clicking in the first line of the signature. That changes the font like I mentioned above.

This isn't a Mac vs. Windows issue. It is an Outlook vs. Non-Outlook issue. What you need to do is include a plain text message at the top of your emails that says something like ... "If you are unable to view this message clearly, click here" where "here" is a link to a web page that contains your message.

[Mail is one of the most email standards compliant email clients|http://www.email-standards.org/clients>. Apple has tried to make it work using the Attachment options in the edit menu. Outlook was designed to work within an Exchange server environment, not necessarily over the internet. I can't remember the exact words, but it calls external addresses something like "internet email." Email is Internet by definition; there is no reason to qualify it. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

Email is a text only specification. Everything that comes as non-text is converted to text and sent over the internet as text and delivered to a recipient's email client where it is recompiled into something else. You really have no control over how your recipient will see what you send. The only hope you have is that your recipient uses an standards compliant email client. If you need to control the format of your messages, use a tool that is designed for the purpose like pdf.

Microsoft ** claims that they are working on a full Outlook client for the next Mac Office suite. I don't know when that is planned for release, though.

We've had similar issues which have been alleviated by using Entourage. If you're dealing with the 'business world', you're likely going to need MS Office for your Mac and Entourage comes with it.

It'll also save a few other document sharing issues like in Excel/Numbers Word/pages.

Good luck!

What is interesting is that Outlook maintains the correct formatting used on your Mac Mail signature, so I am taking advantage of this.

I have created a bunch of signature for different need (some for work, some for personal, etc.) and I always make sure they contain a couple "blank" lines above my signature information. Make sure the blank lines are formatted with the font style you want.

When I create a new message, I pick the appropriate signature and move the edit point into the first blank line of the signature. Everything you type in this area will maintain formatting when viewed in Outlook.

Here a little tip... include a character in the first line of your signature to help you identify where the signature area starts (I use a single underscore). It is easy to delete the character once the signature is used in your message.

Please provide detailed information on how you are composing your email messages.