Q: Mail - OSX Lion - Can't change font in mail list

"I stopped reading after this sentence. ... End of story."

You've got to help yourself. Apple doesn't monitor these threads for product feedback (so I've been told numerous times). What you can do in the meantime is work around the issue. I don't appreciate the snarkiness. I've just taken the time to explain one possible reason as to why a firm would not want to spend more money on something and also I've provided a few options for being able to brighten up your Apple experience by using free software or upgrading to a more custom mail client application. I don't think my attempt to provide insight and alternatives warrants treating me with disrespect.

Sorry, not my intent to seem dismissive, but playing devil's advocate for whatever perceived business plan you've worked out for them just doesn't add much to this discussion about an interface bug. Of course there are alternative ways to read your email. We all know that and that's beside the point, as is whatever behind-the-scenes bean counting that goes into deciding whether or not to fix a broken feature.

I don't understand "devil's advocate". But I understand you're now being more genuine in our conversation. So thank you for that. Maybe you weren't interested in the "bean counting" (lol cocoa, nice touch!) but you can't speak on behalf of everyone (8000+ thread hits when I refreshed) who may stumble on to this page looking for a solution to not being able to read their mail. I would bet money that at least one of them is interested in the decision making processes of business firms as well. It's good to be informed. I paid a lot of money for business school and I understand the business process. It's not good to be rude though to others who are here to help and provide, even though it's very easy to go down that route. And like I said, Apple isn't interested in this forum at all. People like you and me and 8,000 something others are. We're supposed to help each other. All I tried to do.

The fact is that their IS a configuration preference.  Changing its value doesn't change the font.  That's a bug and it should be fixed.  

This thread is on a forum entitled 'Apple Support Communities', which while open to interpretation, seems to me to be about asking the community for help in working around / solving the problem.  Someone's random theory about why it hasn't been fixed by Apple seems besides the point, and just ends up being trolling.

I did say "I agree". I'm not disagreeing. I think it's noteworthy as to why I agree. I put it down here because of the fact this is a "discussion". Because you don't think it adds to the "dicussion" doesn't mean I should disappear because I'm "trolling". Who put you in charge? Apple knows about this "bug". That was previously stated. Apple doesn't look here much. That's common knowledge. What's not common knowledge, is why Apple would have bugs in their software at this moment in time. I brought up the "why" because it seems like nobody can figure that out. I simply stated why, based on my extensive experience as a business leader. How a few users can say what I'm posting is unhelpful and jump on me for trying to be helpful is beyond me. I didn't want to keep bringing up the "how" and "why" but a few of you insist on telling me it doesn't matter, and my input on this discussion doesn't matter.

My implicit questions still exist though: How can you expect there will be no bugs in a $30 piece of bundled software? How can you expect immediate resolution of an issue that, while it exists for all users, only effects the routine of around 0.025% of all end-users? I think that's all worthy of "discussion". That's why I brought it up here, in the "discussion" about this exact issue. But then again, I am in the minority here and I get that so if it's not "helpful" to the people following this then fine. But you can't deny it's a little ridiculous to expect immediate resolution for a technically small issue. Apple has bigger fish to fry and I can at least respect that and find a workaround until they get to fixing this issue.

So if Apple's not reading this, and I am, and you are, does it really matter if we theorize a little? There's nothing wrong with exercising your thought process. I think we all need realize that we're in a discussion and everyone who's allowed to should be able to contribute in their own way.

Has anyone found a fix for this yet?

This is just the latest in a number of problems ive encountered since moving to Lion.

Hi All

The only problems I'm having with Mail are:

keyboard short cuts for formatting text withing a message (eg Cmd+I and Cmd+B) ... I have to bring up the fonts palette and click through the font, and sometimes the style ...

copy or cut and paste pastes the content in the wrong place (eg at the top of the email)

Leopard did the latter too ...

Cheers

Paul

DANO-67 you are awsome, was pulling my hair our trying to make the mailboxes smaller.... thanks

Double cheers to DANO-67, I was going crazy too........and the added bonus to find how to always show the scrolling bars.  thank god.

Open ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Search for:

<key>RichMessageList</key>

Change the true value to false

Save the .plist file and re-launch Mail

The list will have returned to the "classic" layout (and will now show the fonts in the size you want), while keeping the rest of the app in the new layout.

The down side is that you'll lose the multi-line preview, but you can make the thing readable this way.

This isn't half bad! That middle column ends up a little cramped, but it's definitely usable on a 1400 pixel wide monitor if you tweak the columns a bit. Thanks much for the workaround.

Hi Foovius,

actually, I cannot find the string <key>RichMessageList</key> in my .plist file. I am working with OSX 10.7.2. Did you find the workaround with the 10.7.3?

I wouldn't *think* Mail's preferences file would change, since I'm not sure they made any real changes to Mail between 10.7.2 and 10.7.3. I edited my prefs file using TextWrangler, by the way, and found the string right away.

Just curious, any reason you're holding off on 10.7.3? I installed it on my both my Mini and Air, and no problems.

One caveat to those instructions, by the way: Before you try the fix, open Mail and uncheck "use classic layout" in viewing preferences. THEN quit mail and make the edit.

Me neither acutally, I was just suggesting that since I did not find this string...and I also opened the .plist file with textwrangler.

And there is a very good reason actually: I received a couple of hours ago my new Mac, but I still do not have a broadband connection at my place, and I don't like the idea to download ~1Gb with the 3G on my iphone that I am using as an hotspot to be online right now

alessioT wrote:

 

I still do not have a broadband connection at my place, and I don't like the idea to download ~1Gb with the 3G on my iphone that I am using as an hotspot to be online right now

That's a pretty good reason.

Me neither acutally, I was just suggesting that since I did not find this string...and I also opened the .plist file with textwrangler.

Well, just for kicks, I went into my Time Machine backups and grabbed my old com.apple.mail.plist file (from when 10.7.2 was installed) and did find the RichMessageList string there. So maybe try the search again? Could be better to just search for "RichMessageList". It's about 1/5 the way down from the beginning.