Can't format bold or italic text in Mac Mail

Question

Level 1

11 points

Can't format bold or italic text in Mac Mail

When clicking on the 'B' or 'I' in Mac Mail to get bold or italic text, it doesn't work. It doesn't matter what font I choose, I can't format the text. Underline and strike-through work fine though.

When I click the B/I buttons with the preferences pane open, the preferences pane switches to the selected format, but the selected text in the message doesn't. The only way I can get the message text to be bold or italic is to click bold or italic in the preferences pane.

I've tried:

Restarting Mac Mail

Restarting my laptop

Any font with Bold/Italic options

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)

Big Sur (11.3.1)

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks.

Posted on Jun 10, 2021 10:09 AM

Reply

Answer 1

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Jun 11, 2021 2:14 PM in response to Kickpedal

Hello Kickpedal,

Thanks for reaching out through the Apple Support Communities about that issue with the bold and italic font options in Mail.

Does that still continue after updating to macOS 11.4? How to update the software on your Mac

If so, have you installed any third-party fonts on your Mac?

Additionally, are you able to validate one of the fonts you’ve tried so far using the steps from this article? Install and validate fonts in Font Book on Mac

Hopefully those details will help to further isolate and address this behavior.

Take care.

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Answer 2

Owl-53

Level 10

102,379 points

Jun 12, 2021 4:09 AM in response to Kickpedal

As an Aside to your specific issue - working on Big Sur 11.3.1 is out-dated and not up-to-date. Big Sur 11.4 since May 26, 2021

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Answer 3

Kickpedal Author

Level 1

11 points

Jun 11, 2021 6:45 PM in response to SnickZ.

Hey Snick, thanks for the reply.

This started happening suddenly ~6 weeks ago and I upgraded to Big Sur from Catalina in the hopes that would resolve the issue.

I don’t manage my fonts through Font Book. I manage them through Font Agent Pro.

As a designer by profession, I have plenty of third-party fonts on my system. I’ll check that article and see if that helps.

I’m going to hit up Font Agent Pro as well to see if there’s an update there (just thought of it).

Happy to hear about any new advice based on the content of this post.

J

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Can't format bold or italic text in Mac Mail

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