The age-old outgoing mail font problem

Hear hear! (sp?)

The only response I've seen from Apple geeks is that Apple is right and Microsoft is wrong. Well, I tend to believe that, but self righteous posturing is not fixing anything. We need a fix!

Happy to see there is a new version of the Universal Mailer working on ML

I have been frustrated by this as, it just isn't profesional looking and saying "outlook is interpreting it incorrectly" which is a support response I received isn't helpful. It doesn't matter is Outlook doesn't interperet it correctly - it needs to be compatible for an asthetic appearance.

I haven't had 100% success with the UM signature portion so I actually edited by signature files and locked them to prevent Mail from changing the font size. I prefer both the message body and signature be the same sizes. As far as I can tell Apple Mail doesn't specify in outgoing message a font size/font face and the reciever sees it with their default setting and the signature is usually has a font size (small, medium or large).

Let Apple know to have this incompatibility fixed with Outlook (and other email programs) to have set font and size set with outgoing mail - with signatures included in matching message body text:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Good luck!

Hi all. I have been trying to solve this issue for a while and found this thread and installed Universal Mailer. It would appear that it does the square root of nothing. Anyone know if this actually works or I'm wasting my time installing/uninstalling/troubleshooting etc?

To force Outlook to recognize the rich text, you must change the font in the message. The normal formatting created when you just type away is ignored by Outlook and presented as plain text.

I have set my default message font to Verdana 11pt but whenever I recieve a reply to one of my emails it appears in huge Times Roman at varying sizes. Typesetting is one of my services so it makes me look like a bit of a muppet! Not sure how I work around this? 😕

Outlook doesn't recognize the encoding when you just use the "default" font. You have to make a change in your message, every time.

If you care what your customers see, don't use email. There is nothing in the standard that guarantees they will see what you format. Send a pdf. Outlook is probably the worst client at supporting the standards that do exist.

I use Universal Mailer and it works fine for me. The key is to make sure your settings have checked "Force font of outgoing mails" checked and you have your font and size selected. I don't use points.

I just checked again with a friend who has Outlook 2010 and my signature and messages content all match in font type and size. I wrote a blog post about it to help others and the developer is pretty helpful over at his Github page.

http://www.artsassistance.com/apple-mail-font-size-problem-workaround-for-outloo k-recipients/

Thanks Nancy. I will try to follow your tips. I am away from my mac at moment but pretty sure that the version of the plug in I have doesn't have the same options (I'm running Mavericks). My second Mac has Mountain Lion so will try the corresponding plug in and see.

For all Steve Hobs said about beautiful typography being on of the cornerstones of the Mac it seems ludicrous that Apple have allowed this to slip. Makes us Mac users appear tasteless in the eyes of PC users.

And on my iPad I cannot seem to edit the previous post with the sacrilegious misspelling of Steve Jobs name. Embarrassing :-/

For all Steve Hobs said about beautiful typography being on of the cornerstones of the Mac it seems ludicrous that Apple have allowed this to slip. Makes us Mac users appear tasteless in the eyes of PC users.

But, alas, it has nothing to do with Apple and Mail. It is one of the most standards-compliant email clients in the market. It sends properly encoded emails that will display correctly on any standards-compliant email client.

Barney (as often happens) is right.

If you send me an email I will see it in the font I have set, not the one you have set. If you try to paginate an email like a piece of graphic design you are probably wasting your time - unless you save your lovingly-paginated page as an attachment and email the attachment.

Just installed the Mountain Lion version on my MBP and followed the steps. Sent an email to a PC recipient who replied and although my original message is no longer in Times New Roman it is in a drastically smaller size to the still too large signature. Message looks 7pt, signature about 18pts!

I see responses in email to this question but unfortunately I don't see them here but here goes.

Mavericks - the developer made a version already for it:

http://universalmailer.github.io/UniversalMailer/

If you want to know WHY Outlook explodes the signature it is because the size set by Apple for the signatures aren't specific points/pixels (pixels if safer FYI). It sets a size of small, medium and large and the email client (in this case Outlook) get to interpret what size that means. Most people have a medium size set (set by Mail).