Apple Mail fails to format pastes from MS Word correctly - why?

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Level 1

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Apple Mail fails to format pastes from MS Word correctly - why?

When I paste pre-written and formatted content from MS Word into Apple Mail to send it looks correct, but on sending the recipient sees different formatting?

Eg indented bullet point, look fine from Word, but pasting into Apple Mail indents go negative, ie to left-hand side of paragraphs - why?

Bullet markers are changed by Apple Mail too - after sending - why?

Indents from MS Word are lost when received by recipients - why?

In my sent mail the email looks correct, but what was received is not the same?

How can Apple Mail fail to integrate seamlessly pastes from the worlds number one word processor?

Users shouldn't have to do anything other than click 'paste'

Why has this not been fixed?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 3, 2020 4:08 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

BobTheFisherman

Level 10

80,173 points

May 3, 2020 4:21 PM in response to Frisson411

Because an email client is not a word processor like Word is. Word documents contain lots of specific formatting unique to Word.

Attach Word documents to your email if you want the recipient to receive Word formatted documents.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

113,674 points

May 4, 2020 8:45 AM in response to Frisson411

Rich Text Format or HTML is the only way to format an email message.

Whatever Word embeds into the email will be misinterpreted by just about every email client because it contains information that the email protocol does not support. If you need your recipient's to see a document exactly as you formatted, send them a PDF. That's why PDF exists.

Mail does seem to double-space paragraphs, regardless of the word processor, but formatting pasted from Pages seems to email without issue. I didn't test much more than bullets, underline, and Italic.

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Apple Mail fails to format pastes from MS Word correctly - why?

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