Apple Mail Cut & Paste Problem...

While this may work, it is a "workaround".

The bottom line is that this takes three times the effort that Apple's Mail Signatures feature is supposed to provide in one place, easily, with little effort.

It plain and simple doesn't work!

No it has not. Mail still fails with formatting the signature. And it fails with font formatting in general when viewed by non-Apple email clients. Apple shows no interest in fixing the most basic shortcomings of it email client after much reporting on the issue to it directly and indirectly from its user community.

Basically, Mail fails as a modern, adequate email tool for anyone interested in productivity and maintaining a professional image. If you want to be seen as a techical neophyte beholden to Apple, continue to use Mail.

Dittos.

Unfortunately, as many have commented both here, and in a growing number of forums and discussions, Apple, especially related to its mainstay computers that got them to where they are, is flailing in ANY kind of quality or care for its customers.

"Apple", and all it used to mean, seems to also have been buried with its found Mr. Jobs.

It used to be that even the smallest of details were even more important to Apple than "the big picture"; though, the "big picture" for Apple WAS in the details.

Such an innocuous thing such as we have been experiencing and reporting diligently to Apple, respectfully to Apple, is immoral. We don't even get attention or a response from Apple, in any way, shape, or form. I hope we all can continue to monitor this forum, and others, and keep on this.

Hopefully, someone, at Apple will start caring about its customers again, and "the details" that made Apple who they are.

You know the good tech companies do monitor their forums, right? More importantly, the group monitoring this particular thread was hyperactive; it's all here for your perusal. We scoured the Internet for solutions. We came up with numerouse and quite cumbersome workarounds. We contacted Apple's support lines. We went to their Genius (wow, that makes me laugh now) Bars. We have even attempted to organize a protest day to all hit the Apple Stores at once. And this is all to no avail.

My support contracts never helpled. My faith in Apple evaporated.

At this point, I see the forum as just a place to document Apple's ongoing apathy and disregard of its user community. I was a Fanboy. Those days are gone.

WOW, just skimmed through most of this thread. I can't believe how awful Apple's support has been for not being on top of this. That said, I unfortunatley will have to use one of the workaround methods suggested throughout this thread

MY QUESTION:

Is there anyway to tell if you're font is going to be screwy looking before you send? (like a check or safeguard procedure). It's frustrating because the font looks normal in my email draft and then someone will show me what it actually looked like when i sent it, and it's all different font sizes and looks very embarrassing.

Urggggggh

Unfortunately, I haven't found any way to guarantee the look / feel of Apple Mail. I routinely highlight all text and apply a specific font + font size, only to find that when people reply to my messages the text is often vastly different from what I've seen before I hit send: different font sizes, some words (randomly) end up in blue font, extra carriage returns, etc.

It is unbelievable that Apple refuses to fix this. Like so many others in this thread, I've been an Apple advocate for many years, running numerous businesses in a 100% Apple environment. No more...

Interesting point. So it seems like a workaroudn could be just to make my default font arial or times roman or something then if what you say is true.

In regards to Apple refusing to pay any serious attention to their community in regards to their issue, has anyone tried hitting up their social media channels? I imagine if we influxed them with a bunch tweets and comments on their facebook page it could get higher on their radar. A lot of major brands are taking their online PR very seriously as they rightfully should

Have you read this thread or did you just pop in and try to answer a single question you clearly haven't researched in detail? It has everything to do with Apple. We have a multitude of issues documented here and in numerous other locations. I'm not going to rehash all of the examples of Mail's failings. But I'll give one. So for example, the coding used for your customized signature and the body font are completely different beasts. In almost all non Apple-email apps, your recipients will see different fonts and formats for the two items. This is Apple's fault. And if you deal with the real world, most people don't use Apple mail. And the people who have documented these failings can go on and on...

It also will not default to Arial. This truly depends on what you try to do with Mail and the app on the other end. But it will often be a random, ugly rendering in most cases.

The simplest thing you can do within Mail is select the text you just wrote, including signature, and block all of it. Then you must change both the font size AND the format from the bar in the new message dialog. You must change both items to something differnet than what you have set as your font defaults. Otherwise Apple Mail, inexplicably, will not actually apply the changes; they will only display them for you (your recipients will get a mess still). I know this sounds tedious and complicated..because it is tedious and complicated. This appears to have become Apple's new, new way in their approach to old, heavily used products.

Best, Ex-Fanboy

Hi Drick002. Unfortunately, what he said is not true. Apple doesn't really apply "coded" fonts in default mode. Your default, from Apple's perspective, is for display purposes (meaning how you want things rendered on your screen) only. It does do a sort of crude, non-standardized coding of your default font for your inserted signature. The recipient of a non-Apple mail program, as a result, will not see what you see and will likely see multiple fonts and formatting you never intended. And this has been going on, with constant complaining to Apple through multiple channels, for years.

I used to encourage people to use all means possible to complain to Apple. I still respond here, obviously. But I feel like a beleaguered Apple user to say the least.

If impression is important to you, Apple Mail is not a solution. I've phased out various products after waiting too long for updating.

Best, Ex-Fanboy

<Edited By Host>

Not sure about the font not coming through if not present on recipient's computer. I believe that mail's signature is "immune" to that issue, though this may be part of the probablem.

The problem isn't whether the same fonts show up on the recipients received email; it is that the email (if using a signature) usually ends up "garbled" half the time. I had people replying back to me showing what happens - the signature gets "messed up" ...... lines shifted and part still formatted, parts not.

I have basically stopped using any formatting in signatures and only use the base font of either helvetica or geneva with an occasional bold or underline. Much more than that and it is GUARANTEED to screw up as previously discussed in this forum. Even with this, I still get the problem of when some test is cut or copied and it gets pasted into the next universe somewhere on the signature ...... somewhere, but NEVER where you want it. And again, don't even THINK about using the formatting that is SUPPOSEDLY usable in a signature, or mix fonts, etc.

SHAME on Apple .......... maybe this is the WHOLE reason their stock has dropped from $702 to about $430?

Oh well, can dream can't I!!!!

Actually - it does have to do with Apple. The wrong font display (type, size, colour, text spacing) happens on my system; e.g the message that I originally sent, which was copied in my correspondent's reply, has the wrong fonts - even if I've used a default font such as Arial as my outgoing font.

20 November 2012 I spoke to AppleCare in Australia, and a man called Andrew got me to send all the data from my Mac (via an app that he emailed to me) for diagnostic purposes. I also emailed him a video of my screen while editing a new message. I believed that he was "escalating" the issue.

18 February 2013 I followed up again with AppleCare; had to explain everything again; had to email the screen-video again. Raymond asked me try a new signature that he emailed me; I tried it but no difference; I emailed him back but no reply.

21 February 2013 I spoke with Matthew, senior advisor at AppleCare. He thinks that Andrew did not escalate the issue in November, but doesn't know why. My screen-video is not attached to the case as it is too large. I emailed a smaller version. Matthew says he will escalate the issue, and get back to me. I tried to make it clear to Matthew how disappointing it is to bang our heads against the wall repeatedly. I asked him to look at this discussion list, and he kindly agreed to. I directed him to page 13, which seems the best summary of our collective wall-banging. He said that he understands my frustration. Of course, I am looking forward with bated breath to hear back from Apple. (Matthew: if you're reading this, sorry for my sarcasm, but it's hard to stay optimistic!)

Peter - I've had much the same experience as you. I installed special diagnostics, spoke to multiple senior engineers each of whom was able to replicate the problem, and have had no response - in spite of chasing via Apple Care and directly to the senior engineers who have worked on my case. I was told numerous times that the issue was being looked at by engineering. Nothing has happened. I hope that your discussions with Matthew finally get this onto Apple's radar.

Part of the problem is that I have been too busy over the last few months to follow this up with AppleCare. Now I realise that letting them get on with it (instead of hounding them), is not the approach to take.

I have no idea if my case number would be of any use to any of you when speaking with AppleCare, but here it is: AppleCare Case Number (Australia, in case it's not an international number) 375524427.

I guess I imagine an ideal world when Sharae, for example, could mention to her/his AppleCare senior engineer that a guy in Australia with this case number has the same problem, and Apple says thank-you for providing that extra information as it will really help us correct this problem! (I like reading fantasy fiction, and I've just discovered that I can _write_ fantasy fiction too!)

This is the email I sent this morning:

Thanks, Matthew. I have no preference as to who takes action, as long as somebody does. Three months of (apparently) no action is unreasonable. After I spoke to you yesterday, I got a bee in my bonnet and phoned back to ask about Apple's procedure for following up on unresolved cases, to find out that unless the user phones back, Apple ignores unresolved cases. I am very disappointed with the lack of response from Apple on this issue. I frankly cannot understand why Apple is ignoring this issue and/or ignoring the many users experiencing this issue.

I beg you to ask your superiors to view the long discussion on discussions.apple.com and urge them to take coordinated action rather than individual action or what is apparently happening now: no action.

If (and it's a big if) Apple engineers are examining the issue, why doesn't Apple provide feedback to its exasperated users?

I'm still waiting for Raymond to phone me back. I have sent him a second email explicitly asking him to do so.

Peter

On 21/02/2013, at 3:45 PM, Matthew [deleted] wrote:

Hi Peter,

Thank you for providing the clip to me. I can clearly see the issue that you are experiencing. In this case it appears that Raymond is wanting to continue to follow up with you personally. I will forward the email to him and attach the video to the case. If you do have any issues please let me know as I would be more then happy to continue this case with you.

Regards,

Matthew [deleted]

Senior Support Advisor

Raymond from AppleCare (whom I spoke to a couple of days ago) phoned back. Raymond has had the last two days off, so that's why he hadn't phoned me. Once again AppleCare are asking for me to Capture Data from my iMac. Apparently when I did it in November, the system was that the user emails it directly back to the advisor, and it is unfortunately not attached to my case. Today the data captured has been uploaded to Apple via a web link, so hopefully it will be attached to my case this time.

Raymond claims that he will contact the engineers and then contact me again with their response. I expressed my scepticism on this, and referred to my own experience from three months ago, and the common experience expressed here in this discussion. He seems like a nice guy. He seems eager to help. Just like Andrew from AppleCare in November. Sigh. Raymond's only explanation for why Apple might not have responded is that the engineers have not been able to replicate the issue. I told him that it feels like Apple isn't interested in helping us because we are small in number, at least compared to the number of users of Apple Mail worldwide. He denied this.

I asked Raymond if it would be useful if I knew case numbers for other people around the world with the same issue. He excitedly said that it would.

If you have a case number for this problem, and you are willing to share it, could you please post it here?