Setting Background Color in Mail v. 5.1

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Level 1

5 points

Setting Background Color in Mail v. 5.1

I finally upgraded to 10.7.3 from 10.6.8. I find that I can no longer set background color inoutgoing messages. Same for my wife's computer running 10.8.3

I manage a small email list for my wife's restaurant, and we set the background color to our rather distinctive wall color. In 10.6.8, I clicked on the font icon in the message toolbar, then on the background color icon that appeared. This only worked one time, after that it was disabled and you could not go back to it, but that was enough. The good news was, when I would Select All/ Copy All/ Paste into a new message, the background color would be copied along with text and photos.

Using Mail 5.1 on System 10.7.3 (or on 10.8.3, for that matter) when I hit the Font icon, I get the Colors icon in the toolbar of the message. However, this is strictly text, not background. I tried clicking and dragging, context clicking, and the menu, but no go, the color doesn't go to the background. I tried copying from an older message, but this does not work either. I double and triple checked, and yes, I'm sending HTML messages.

The only workaround I have found is quite cumbersome: Take an older, colored message. Save as Stationery. Then when I open a new window, I have to click five times, twice on very small targets, plus two Commands, in this sequence: Stationery/ Scroll to end of stationery list/ Custom/ Click on new (colored) stationery/ click on body of message/ Select All/ Paste (to erase the stationery and insert my new message). What a pain! I used to double click on the body of the next message, hit Command-V, Command-Shift-D to send, and repeat. I could send my whole list in the time it takes to do one message now.

I'll never use the other stuff in the stationery folder, so it would save one click to get rid of it. But why can't a plain color be saved as Stationery? That would save a Command-A. Better yet, why can't backgrounds be copied any more? This seems insensitive from a company that insists in putting a colored jellybean around every marketing message they send me.

Before posting, I searched the Support Community. I found this issue cropping up going way back to 10.4, but it was mostly resolved by 10.6.8 as described above. The only posts I've seen for Lion or Mountain Lion suggest using Rules. However, Rules only works for incoming messages, I need to do this in an outgoing message.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Jim

Mail 5.1-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 24, 2013 8:27 PM

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Answer 1

pjdube

Level 3

835 points

Apr 24, 2013 8:50 PM in response to jimmer57

That's a good question. I have not figured that out yet.

I use the following applescript and set it as an app and just click on it and it creates a new email with the background orange.

In case no one else is able to help you, you can try using this:

tell application "Mail"

set newMessage to makenewoutgoing message

tell newMessage

set background color to orange

end tell

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Answer 2

jimmer57 Author

Level 1

5 points

Apr 24, 2013 9:20 PM in response to pjdube

pjdube—

Thanks for the quick response. Two questions:

-I've never used Applescript, but I opened the Applescript Editor and pasted in your script. It returned the following message. How do I fix this?

error "Mail got an error: Can’t set background color of outgoing message id 100 to orange." number -10006 from background color of outgoing message id 100

-I'm actually using a custom color, not exactly orange but on the RGB sliders 218, 152 and 1./ How would I adapt the script to this color?

Thanks,

Jim

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Answer 3

jimmer57 Author

Level 1

5 points

Apr 24, 2013 9:29 PM in response to jimmer57

pjdube—

I tried testing your script by shortening it to this:

tell application "Mail"

set newMessage to makenewoutgoing message

end tell

It returned a result, saying:

outgoing messageid 109 of application "Mail"

Actually, that was a bunch or results, I kept looking for what happened. Maybe there are messages #101-109 on my computer somewhere, but damned if I can find them. They don't show up as a Window in Mail or on the desktop or in the outbox or anywhere I can see. What result do you expect?

Best,

Jim

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