View mail in html or plain text with one click toggle?

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Level 1

42 points

View mail in html or plain text with one click toggle?

Hi,
I like mail.app alot but there is one feature I can't find: toggling between viewing incoming mail as plain text or html format.
As a point of comparison, MS Outlook allows all mail to be read as plain text by default, and html messages to be viewed as the sender intended by right clicking the message and selecting view as html. It's a great feature that allows all received mail to look similar (nice when processing alot of email!) and provide a layer of security/anonymity, while providing a quick way to see the full version "on the fly."
Can this be done with mail.app?
If not, any recomendations for other mac email clients?

Thanks,
Ryan

iMac G5 17 PPC 2GHz 2G RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on May 26, 2006 3:08 PM

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Answer 1

May 26, 2006 5:22 PM in response to RQ

At the Mail.app menu bar, go to Mail > Preferences > Viewing.

Deselect "Display remote images in HTML messages".

This doesn't cause all received messages to be converted or viewed in Plain Text but this provides the layer of security you referred to. If a received messages includes embedded images or objects that must be rendered from a remote server to be viewed, there will be a Load Images button on a blue bar background at the top right of the message header.

If you don't deselect "Display remote images in HTML messages" (which everyone should), the Mail.app includes a layer of security for spam messages received but only for those correctly marked as Junk. If a spam message received includes embedded images or objects that must be rendered from a remote server to be viewed and the message is correctly marked as Junk by the Mail.app Junk Mail filter, no remote images will be rendered automatically regardless if "Display remote images in HTML messages" is selected or not.

If a received message was composed in HTML and with such a message open, at the menu bar go to View > Message and select Plain Text Alternative. There is also a keyboard shortcut provided next to the Plain Text Alternative selection.

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Answer 2

RQ Author

Level 1

42 points

May 31, 2006 5:15 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Thanks Allan-
That was pretty much the info I was looking for. The terminology used in the message viewing options is a little vague ("next best alternative") but it seems to do the trick when switching views.
For some reason emails from the NY Times always display in html, with no option to view them otherwise. Not sure why that happens but I'm not going to think to hard on it.
I also found this method in another post which sets the default view to plain text.
enter this at a command line prompt (terminal) to view all mail in plain text
"defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE" (no quotes)

Thanks again,
Ryan

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