automatically creating links when writing mail

A URL such as http://www.apple.com/ or an email address included in the body of a message doesn't become active with the Mail.app until after sending the message. You can check the copy of a sent message in the account's sent mailbox after sending a message with a URL to confirm.

To insert a hyperlink such as here instead of http://www.apple.com/ requires selecting the text you want to convert to a hyperlink and at the menu bar, go to Edit and select Add Hyperlink.

I am running Panther (OS X 10.3). I cut and paste a complete URLs into a mail message (such as http://www.apple.com/) using the built in Mail app. My friend reads the message using Outlook 2003 running on Windows XP Pro. He tells me the links are not active (i.e. not clickable). He also says my mail messages are the only ones in which the links are not clickable.

Are you using RTF or Plain Text for message composition?

Microsoft email clients don't seem to read Mail's RTF properly.

Are you including a link on a separate line by itself without any text before or after the link on the same line?

If not, make sure you always let URLs begin at a line of their own.

In other words, hit Return before typing or pasting the URL.

Instead of writing "Visit http://email.about.com/od/macosxmail/", for example, type

Visit
http://email.about.com/od/macosxmail/

I am using RTF and the URL is on it's own line. I'll try using plain text.

Using plain text worked.

I wonder what kind of tags Mac Mail is putting in when using RTF that Outlook doesn't understand. I tried to look at the HTML using Dreamweaver (on the receiving machine (windows), but it looks like garage. See below for an example:

<?/x-tad-bigger><?color><?param 0000,0000,FFFF><?/x-tad-bigger> http://www.amazon.com<?/x-tad-bigger><?color><?/x-tad-bigger>


Mac Mini - 1.5 Ghz, 512MB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.4)