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Level 1

76 points

increase mail viewing font size???

I have been tolerating this for years and am finally tired of it as there MUST be a way to fix this that I am unaware of.

I have my MacMail set to use an 11 pt Arial font when writing messages, which is a standard font size for letters, etc. However when you are reading or writing your message, it does not DISPLAY as 11 point, but teeny weeny as if you are using a 6 point font.

Increasing this in preferences to something like 18 point simply makes your display look larger (like 11 point) but then the message your recipient gets is monstrously huge because you are really sending them 18 point type!

Why is this not a normal Apple WYSIWYG view? I don't have this issue on anything else on my Macs (viewing Safari, Quicken, Quickbooks, Excel, Word, Text, Messages, whatever - only Mail messages.

There must be a fix for this - no? I literally am to the point where I have to use a magnifying glass to read what I'm typing! LOL!

Any help is appreciated.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Jul 4, 2015 5:04 AM

Best reply

gwv29

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Jan 22, 2018 10:59 AM

Just was writing a long Email and my lettering was getting too small to read as my eyes are not getting any better. A quick google search brought me here to find out how to increase the appearance of the mail I am writing, without changing the font size, as this would affect the way the mail is received (as clearly pointed out by the previous contributors). It is utterly disappointing that (apparently) this cannot be done! I second your disappointment over the lack of progress here.

As a loyal apple fan (my first mac was a mac classic in 1991), I am getting more and more disappointed; sloppy software upgrades more concerned with appearance than functionality (when was the last real killer new feature in OSX?), deteriorating security (remember the recent embarrassing mishaps), more and more the embrace of the Mac ecosystem only without consideration for other platforms, and getting more and more expensive relative to the competition (who wants to pay £2000 or even £3000 for a laptop that you can no longer upgrade?).

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35 replies

gh00al

Level 1

13 points

Jun 10, 2018 8:24 PM in response to bucky5819

There is no app on any computer that allows you to scale every aspect of its interface. Changing font size in Preferences is designed to allow adjustment of the most reading-intensive part of the interface, i.e. the messages. The rest of the interface in Mail—meaning the icons, menus, folder names—is fixed at the same size as the general interface for every other app that uses Apple's standard look (Finder, Safari, Chrome, Microsoft Office... virtually all apps short of games). If this general interface size is too small for your comfort that's totally understandable, but then the solution is not specific to any one app like Mail. Instead you should look into scaling your display resolution (System Preferences → Displays → Display → Scaled). Or if needed some of the specialized accessibility features for vision-impaired users like system-wide zoom.

I know this stuff is frustrating but it's not always that Apple doesn't care—just that there's only so simple they can make it... there are always going to be important things that are not as easy to do as we would like.

That said, I would offer that Apple's default system-wide interface size is too small. But that might just be our opinion—not sure that everyone would agree. Anyway, it doesn't bother me too much because it's easy to fix through display resolution scaling, etc.

Jun 16, 2018 12:46 PM in response to lilskye

Your post is listed under Apple Music. This won't help the Mail team to get notified about the issue.

I have this issue too. The 11pt display size is too small. When I increase the display size to 14pt, the font size that is displayed on the sent email is twice smaller (8pt) than the original. It's a bug. Apple, we need a fix now!

Jul 3, 2018 3:39 AM in response to mwally28

Yeah, I see the same thing here, i.e. Enlarging "Message Font" changes the font size when I view it on Mac Mail, but doesn't seem to affect what the email recipient sees. I tried sending a message with Helvetica 18 and Helvetica 15 to a Gmail account. Both messages look the same on Gmail (web browser.)

peterden

Level 1

29 points

Jul 18, 2018 6:09 PM in response to lilskye

Systems fonts, such as those used in menus and mail message lists, scale according to the resolution of the display. Higher resolution equals smaller appearance. You can make them larger by reducing the display resolution. See http://osxdaily.com/2016/05/23/increase-system-text-size-mac-os-x-scaled-resolut ion/

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 4, 2015 7:51 AM in response to lilskye

Try selecting the window and then use command - + to increase it to a readable size. Command - minus key to return to the normal size.

lilskye Author

Level 1

76 points

Jul 4, 2015 8:13 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for the suggestion, but this does not work, nor does the "Big A, Little A" become active. Not when you are WRITING an email. You can blow them up to read already sent emails and received emails, but what it driving me (and a LOT of others from what I can see) crazy, is why if you have your email set to write using Arial 11, it does write in that (so the receiver on the other end can see it as Arial 11) but what you see on the screen is Ariel 6 - a fraction of the size that you are writing in, making it ridiculously painful to write and proof a long email.

MacMail never did this until the Intel incarnations and I've never been able to fix it. I see online that everyone using Lion, ML, Mav & Yos are all still complaining about this with no solution, which is so odd, as usually everything in Mac is WYSIWYG. It only does this in Mail, not in Textedit or Safari or any other program on the Mac. It also doesn't do this on the iOS on the iPhone or iPad. Only on the actual computer Mail.

There must be a reason and/or solution.

Thanks!

BDAqua

Level 10

239,375 points

Jul 4, 2015 1:02 PM in response to lilskye

In Mail>Preferences>Fonts & Colors, what are the settings there?

lilskye Author

Level 1

76 points

Jul 4, 2015 1:25 PM in response to BDAqua

Its always been set on Arial 11 - I use it always for writing letters etc. 11 & 12 are generally used in legal documents, etc. I never changed the "Fixed Width" thing - I have no idea what that is used for. And I made the "level" lines be white since I don't like them in discussions (in case that has anything to do with it). If you Google this issue you will see there are quite a few people asking this for the past few years. It seemed to happen when I first got this computer a couple of years ago (iMac 2012-13), but does it as well on mine at work (iMac 2014) but both are running Mountain Lion. (I think this does it regardless of Mavericks, or Yosemite though) It would be easier to just change this setting to say Arial 14 or 16 so I could read it better but then the recipient would get emails that read in large letters like a toddler - LOL!!!

Thanks!!!

Feb 10, 2017 10:28 AM in response to Eric Root

Thank you so much. This is so helpful.

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Feb 11, 2017 7:49 AM in response to techmom02

You are welcome.

Jul 19, 2017 10:04 AM in response to Eric Root

Eric, I don't see the solution to this problem, Did I miss something?

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Jul 19, 2017 1:55 PM in response to SergioBelcamine

Did you try BDAqua's suggestion?

mh2694

Level 1

8 points

Jan 30, 2018 8:56 PM in response to lilskye

I want to enlarge the font size in my message list but I am not given that option in preferences. Is there anyway to do this?

Feb 7, 2018 2:31 PM in response to lilskye

How on earth is this question not resolved yet by Apple. We handed you our fortunes, Apple...could you at least spare the few minutes it would take to fix this oversight and help us keep our sight?!

Mar 10, 2018 7:52 PM in response to lilskye

It really is ridiculous that this very basic feature is not enabled. This is a great example of things that make me embarrassed to own a Mac as opposed to a PC...

increase mail viewing font size???