Composing mail message using HTML?

I've tried exactly that and I can't get it to work, although I think the issue I have is with outlook 2010 and not the iPhone.

I sent myself an e-mail containing the signature I wanted. It included two fonts, some of which was bold.

I cleared my sig in Preferences and pasted the new one in.

When I see the -mail in outlook, although it says it's an HTML e-mail, the fonts are still Times (at least their not Courier any more!)

If I open them in Webmail they show correctly and other web-based readers show them correctly.

Anybody know why Outlook won't?

In Apple Mail, what is called "rich text" is actually HTML. However, Apple Mail prefers to use plain text for compatibility. Unless you do something to make it think it needs HTML, you won't get it. What you usually have to do is change some part of the text to some non-default font or style. You have to do this in the message itself. The font settings in Preferences just change the default. You have to make something non-default to trigger HTML. One easy trick is to create a signature that has some styled text in. Then, any time you use that signature you will get an HTML message.

Opinions about the value of HTML mail vary enormously. Quite a few users consider it an abomination and look for tricks to make sure they never have to see it. Others find Mail's inability to set an outgoing default font, size, and color so annoying that they move to Entourage/Outlook or Thunderbird.

If the signature trick does not work for you, the basic method of Mail is that you have to set the font for each message individually in the new message pane, and what you set there must be different that what you have set in Mail > Preferences. Seems crazy, but it has worked this way since at least OS X 10.4.

PS I forgot to mention that someone made an app to address the html mail issue in Mail.

http://messagefont.com/

smitty195 wrote:

Whoa.....that is VERY interesting! I definitely prefer sending out HTML emails because I feel that they look more professional, and the plain text emails look kinda "blah". The reason I find this so interesting is because Apple is so ahead of the curve in so many areas, and this seems way behind the times. They must have a reason for doing this, although offhand I can't come up with one.

Because if you are trying to exchange e-mails with people who have really poor e-mail clients, they won't be able to see anything. E-mail is pretty much a lowest-common denominator. Apple has been steadily dumbing down Apple Mail over the years to make it more compatible with Outlook. There is an e-mail standard for "rich text" messages. Apple was the only company that ever supported it as far as I know. Netscape and Microsoft both came up with HTML e-mail on their own and that became the de-facto standard.

Thank you for the tip of creating a signature with styled text. I've never used a signature before, so I suppose I'll have to start doing that. Yikes.

There are a number of tutorial sites for making really fancy signatures. I've never really used any of them, but if you want to play around, search for "apple mail fancy signature". I normally avoid saying "go Goggle for it", but in this case, there are a number of examples and they are significantly different. You have to find one that makes the most sense to you.

Keep in mind that standard e-mail complexities always apply. You have no guarantee about how your fancy e-mail or signature will be displayed. It may look great in Apple Mail and it could be awful or non-existent in some other client or some webmail tool.

E-mail is just a mess.

Aha, if you change the fallback font, according to this article:

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/521

It works again