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TornRose1971 Author

Level 1

2 points

Mail header/sig font changes size in replies

I have looked for this topic and have failed to find anything related, so if I missed it, I apologize in advance and would love a link to any prior post.

I have all fonts including sig in Mail 4.3 (1081) set to "Lucida Grande 12" I send the email and they reply back header of my email address, date/time and sig of the prior email is all much larger in size (20-22 at a estimate) and it happens more than 90% of the time and at times, its looks larger than 22.

I have changed my fonts and sizes many times but this still happens daily. My professional emails are looking like a 3rd grader wrote them size wise.

Any and all help would be GREATLY appreciated.

If I am not making any sense I can post screen caps.

Thank You

MacBook Pro, 2.53 GHz

Posted on Sep 22, 2010 3:12 PM

30 replies

Dec 17, 2010 3:13 PM in response to Karl Barker

yes, similar problems here.

if apple wants numbers before they act on this, count me in.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,970 points

Dec 17, 2010 3:18 PM in response to shajirajappan

If you want Apple to hear you, you need to post it in the channels they have set up for that. Here you are only talking to other users like yourself.

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

Dec 17, 2010 4:22 PM in response to shajirajappan

i just tried this and for now, it seems to work when received in gmail. i'm still waiting for feedback from non-mac users.

Change Message font to Lucinda Grande 12 (seems to be the only font that works to solve this problem)
Signature - change font to 10
Uncheck "Always match..."

if it works for you, please let us know.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,970 points

Dec 17, 2010 4:36 PM in response to shajirajappan

Change Message font to Lucinda Grande 12

Normally setting the message font in Mail > Preferences should have any effect on what is seen at the other end. Is that what you are doing? You can check for yourself what it does to the code of your outgoing by doing View > Message > Raw Source on something in your Sent folder.

RonsMac

Level 1

16 points

Dec 20, 2010 11:49 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hey Tom,

I'm researching a similar issue and looked at the raw source but didn't see any indication that Mail sends out "suggestions" for font. Was your message meant to say "should NOT have any effect"???

My issue is that it has always bothered me that I can't adjust my viewing preferences compared to what is sent. I have a 24" so everything is tiny. For my mail settings I use Lucida Grande 14 for Mailbox and Message List. Message Font is Helvetica 12 and if i change to 14 it changes but I don't want to send email with such a big font.

So to clarify, in my prefs when I go to Fonts and colors, is that only controlling what I see? or also what is sent?

Thanks,
Ron

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,970 points

Dec 20, 2010 12:30 PM in response to RonsMac

I'm researching a similar issue and looked at the raw source but didn't see any indication that Mail sends out "suggestions" for font. Was your message meant to say "should NOT have any effect"???

Yes, that is correct, I left out the NOT by mistake.

So to clarify, in my prefs when I go to Fonts and colors, is that only controlling what I see? or also what is sent?

Prefs only controls what you see. To control what is sent, you have to set the font for each message individually in the New Message pane. And it should be set to something different than what is in Prefs.

Dec 21, 2010 3:16 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom,
my font settings in my previous post does not work. Neither does setting it in each message. I just need Apple to tell me how I can ensure my mails go out the way it is intended....but looks like that is not forthcoming....sigh!

I'll probably switch to another mail client though I am like using Mail

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,970 points

Dec 21, 2010 3:46 PM in response to shajirajappan

Neither does setting it in each message.

If you select the text in the New Message pane and choose a font (it must be different than the font you have set in Mail > Preferences), it does not go out as you intend? Send me a test message in which the text mentions the font and size you want to appear (tom at bluesky dot org).

NikkieDW

Level 1

0 points

Feb 3, 2011 7:24 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Just sent my comments to Apple as I spent hours and hours trying to figure this out testing between my old windows based laptop running Outlook and mac mail, and only finally got my emails to look a bit more normal by remembering to manually change the font in each message, including any messages that were in the email I was replying to. Whilst this is working it is a bit of a painful work around as you have to remember to do this and when work loads are high the risk of forgetting is high and then you look rather unprofessional to your clients! I really like Mail and do not want to change to a third party mail program - hope Apple fix this!

Feb 4, 2011 7:21 AM in response to TornRose1971

I am having similar problems with the message body, headers, you name it.

I agree with everyone here; messages look like a third grader composed them. I doubt Mail.app users realize what's happening. It's very unprofessional (and frustrating).

My post is here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2735475

I haven't found a solution yet. I am thinking I might have to switch back to Entourage or give the new Outlook a try. <sigh>

atow

Level 1

79 points

Apr 18, 2011 4:58 PM in response to CorgiGirl

I'm the author of MessageFont, a new program that's available on the Mac App Store. MessageFont lets you set the default composition font in Apple Mail. You can use it to have your viewing font set to one font, and your compose font set to another.

You can find the app on the Mac App Store or by visiting messagefont.com.

-adam

P.S. Apple's Terms of Use requires me to disclose that I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Jan 18, 2012 1:42 AM in response to TornRose1971

Hi,

I've struggled with this for a while and I looked at MessageFont, but it doesn't work properly on Lion.

In the end I have moved from Rich text to plain text. This means that my email body and signature have the same font and size when viewed by the recipient.

It's not ideal, but it looks 100% better than the mismatched size does.

I would recommend this solution to anyone still struggling with this problem.

Regards

Steve

JanRL

Level 1

4 points

Apr 3, 2012 1:23 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I'm using Lion 10.7.3 and it's Mail 5.2 (1257) that keeps changing my signature font size. I have checked, double and triple checked that my Mail's signature settings is using the option of "Always match my default message (Helvetica 12)". And when I write a new message and examine the text by using fonts-tool, every line seems to be Helvetica 12 including my signature lines.

But when I sent a message and receive a respond to my message I notice that my signature, that is shown as quotation in the response, is using a wrong font.

When looking the message in raw text I can spot following changes.

Messages style definitions dictate following:

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal

{margin:0cm;

margin-bottom:.0001pt;

font-size:12.0pt;

font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

This is the responders first line and it's style definitions. Just to show that Outlook sends it's style definition for each line seperetly:

<span style=3D"font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Ca=

libri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D">

Then follows quotation lines that I wrote in my first message. The first line has the following style definition, and as we can see it uses the documents style sheet for style definitions:

And finally my signature line has the following style definitions for every line, like the Outlook has.

<span style=3D"font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"He=

lvetica","sans-serif";color:black">

Now why doens't my signature "always match my default message"? Why does it use font size 13.5pt that I haven't used anywhere previously anywhere in the system? Because my signature lines have style definition for each line similar like Outlook's lines, it would suggest that Outlook has modified these fonts. But why would it do so and not touch any other part of the text? What the sent message includes so special that forces the Outlook to change the font size for signature?

Is it because the signature file does not use the style sheet like rest of the text uses? This would explain how Outlook is able to see body text and quotation as different sections and how it could modify those quotation lines' style definiotions. If it is indeed so, shouldn't the "always match my default message" option mean that the style sheet should be used also for signature lines?

I took a look at the sent message's raw text and found the following font style setting that does not appear in anywhere else than with signature lines.

Could this be the reason why Outlook changes the signature font size?

GeorgeGV

Level 1

0 points

Apr 4, 2012 10:56 AM in response to JanRL

Hi, I´ve had the same problem since Snow Leopard when I bought my MacBook Pro. After several tests I copied the original message into Pages and saw how the font got increased, so I decreased in Pages and pasted it back to Mail. It finally worked but it means keeping Mail an Pages opened and copying and pasting to Pages and back for every mail forwarded or replyed to get it to work.

Since Pages shows the actual size Mail is using it makes me think the problem is in Mail, nothing to do with third party apps.

Hope Apple fixes this.

Aug 22, 2012 3:44 PM in response to TornRose1971

I'm having this problem too. From what I have read the easiest solution would be to use the Universal Mailer plugin.

http://noware-it.zxq.net/index.php

I haven't tried it yet but it appears to be just what I was looking for (ie something to pre-define the outgoing font). Why this bug has persisted in Mail through versions 1-6 is anyone's guess. Poor show Apple.

Mail header/sig font changes size in replies