Apple Mail sends plaintext instead of rich text

[mj_]

I've run into an issue with Apple Mail. Generally speaking, sending rich text emails works. However, if I send a simple text-only email without any formatting (aka no lists, no emphases, etc.) Apple Mail sends out a plaintext message instead of a rich text message resulting in garbled signatures when my recipients reply to these particular emails because their respective mail clients will inadvertently choose to respond with a plaintext instead of a rich text or HTML message.

Is there a hidden setting to force Apple Mail to always send out rich text emails regardless of content and simplicity thereof?

 

[0128672]

Check your settings:

"To use the same format for all of your messages, choose Mail > Preferences, click Composing, then choose a message format. If you want to use a different format for replies, select “Use the same message format as the original message.”

Use plain or rich text in emails in Mail on Mac

In Mail on your Mac, change the format of the emails you send.

support.apple.com

 

[mj_]

Thanks. That's the first place I checked, and I have it set to Rich Text already. Toggling the "Use the same message format as the original message" doesn't do anything in this case because it happens when I start composing a new message, not when I am replying to one.

The bottom line is this: when I compose a message without any formatting, just plain text, Apple Mail will send that email out as plaintext regardless of my preferences. Enabling "Rich Text" under Message format will allow me to add some formatting to my message, at which point it is then successfully sent out as rich text instead of plaintext message. I need Mail to always send out rich text regardless of contents.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Here's a web page from someone that knows a lot more than me. As you can see at the bottom, they're resigned to the fact that some formatting must be done in the message in Apple Mail and don't have a client-side fix.

Messages from Apple devices and mobile devices are sent in plain text

This article explains why and how to avoid plain text messages when sending from iOS/Android and other mobile devices as well as from Apple devices such as Mac.

www.codetwo.com

You could use an email template that already has some formatting but that might be more trouble than just making some format change every time…although if you got into the habit of using a template you might be less likely to forget.

How to Create Email Templates in Apple Mail - Eric Clark

In this post (and accompanying video) I will show you an easy way to create reusable email templates in the latest version of Apple Mail. And I have to say, I like this way even better than my old way of using stationery. And, it will work with any version of Apple Mail. ✅ UPDATE […]

ericleeclark.com

 

[NoBoMac]

Or can do as they are doing in the CodeTwo link: create a signature in Mail that has minimal formatting (eg. one's name in bold) and include it in the email.

Tried to get this to work with an empty signature: no luck, needed something that would trigger HTML to be generated.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Or can do as they are doing in the CodeTwo link: create a signature in Mail that has minimal formatting (eg. one's name in bold) and include it in the email.

Once I saw the trouble that a formatted email signature can cause my recommendation to folks was to do just that.

 

[posguy99]

... Apple Mail sends out a plaintext message instead of a rich text message resulting in garbled signatures when my recipients reply to these particular emails because their respective mail clients will inadvertently choose to respond with a plaintext instead of a rich text or HTML message.

How exactly is this a problem on YOUR side?

 

[mj_]

I will try adding a formatted signature, thank you.

@posguy99 It's not a problem at first, but once they respond to my initial message the entire conversation thread remains plain text resulting in either completely garbled or, even worse, entirely missing HTML email signatures. That's fine for personal email conversations but can become an issue with business emails when trying to get in touch with a client or vendor by phone or means other than email. That's how I noticed this was an issue with Mail in the first place.

 

[posguy99]

That's how I noticed this was an issue with Mail in the first place.

So, again, how is this an issue with *Mail* other than with the broken email client on the other end?

 

[mj_]

Because it is not an issue of a broken email client on the other end. The issue is that Mail isn't behaving as expected. If I tell it to always send messages as Rich Text I expect it to send them as Rich Text no matter what. Instead, sometimes it will send out emails as plain text. This is clearly an issue with Mail. If, for example, you tell your word processor of choice, be it Pages, LibreOffice or Word, to save all your documents as ODF files you expect it to do so no matter what and not to automatically revert to TXT files for documents that you haven't formatted yet without giving you proper notice, thereby preventing you from ever formatting those particular documents in the future.

FYI, the other end's behavior is as expected: when responding to a message use whatever format the original message came in. Mail will do that too ("Use the same message format as the original message", see screenshot in post #3) and destroy HTML signatures along the way.

Either way, using the trick referred to by @BrianBaughn and @NoBoMac worked. Using a formatted email signature will force Mail to always send out messages as Rich Text regardless of content.

 

[posguy99]

Because it is not an issue of a broken email client on the other end. The issue is that Mail isn't behaving as expected. If I tell it to always send messages as Rich Text I expect it to send them as Rich Text no matter what.

Semantics. That box doesn't say "always". What you're actually complaining about is that it doesn't waste space including the other MIME type (since it always includes the plain-text), if it doesn't need to (ie there's no enhanced text present). Your "work-around" just means there's always enhanced text present.

The responding client is still the broken one if it does not include the right MIME type if it's including enhanced text.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Semantics. That box doesn't say "always". What you're actually complaining about is that it doesn't waste space including the other MIME type (since it always includes the plain-text), if it doesn't need to (ie there's no enhanced text present). Your "work-around" just means there's always enhanced text present.

The responding client is still the broken one if it does not include the right MIME type if it's including enhanced text.

If the OP goes through his original scenario and uses Mail to send the email to himself and reply…and the result is how he describes…what cllent is broken?

 

[posguy99]

If the OP goes through his original scenario and uses Mail to send the email to himself and reply…and the result is how he describes…what cllent is broken?

I don't know if that was tested. I read through the entire thread again and I still don't know. But I would assume it does not break. If the OP sent a message that was entirely plain-text, then that would also mean it didn't have an enhanced signature. Mail.app would then receive it, and reply in the same format as the original message, and append again the non-enhanced signature, leading to a non-enhanced message.

Myself, I don't use Mail.app any longer on macOS, I'm not interested in Apple's weird ideas about how font sizes are supposed to work. But IMO, a client that does not send both a plain-text MIME-part and an enriched MIME-part when there is enriched text is broken. If there is no enriched text, then sure, only send a plain-text part. But if they're both there it should be up to the receiving client which to pay attention to.

 

[Mmmartin]

I have been digging into this a whole day since I noticed that my clients receive a veeeery different looking emails than I thought I have been sending (Mac Mail Version 12.4).

I started out with one very useful tip from one guy on lifewire (https://www.lifewire.com/text-formatting-images-os-x-mail-1172889) to build my signature via HTML editor and then paste the text into Mac Signatures. After some more digging I went further and placed the created HTML (with my logo hosted on my webpage's server) right into the signature file (https://www.daretothink.co.uk/html-email-signature-in-apple-mail/)

After this fiddling around I have managed to get my signature to look the way I expect also on the other end, yay.


..And her comes the BUT I can't yeat solve:

When I compose an email with my new HTML signature, Mac Mail sends out my signature as expected (Calibri font), but the actual message is undefined text and lends at e.g. Gmail as Arial (I also see that in the raw source of the message in Mac Mail outbox).
IF I format all message (including the new html signature) as Calibri, whole message gets stripped to plain text and lends in whatever format the receiving mail client desires! (yes - Message format is Rich Text..)

What on earth is that??..

How can I permanently apply certain format to all of my outgoing messages? (And probably code way as it seems that Mail>Format> Show Fonts is like piss in the wind..)

Thanks

 

[BrianBaughn]

I would say that if your job description doesn't include "Email Formatting Specialist" then sending a basic-looking email will not hurt your reputation!

 

[mj_]

How can I permanently apply certain format to all of my outgoing messages? (And probably code way as it seems that Mail>Format> Show Fonts is like piss in the wind..)

I don't believe you actually can. The problem is that every computer will have different fonts installed. Calibri is such a font that is very hard to use because it requires Microsoft Office to be installed on the computer for it to be available at all. Otherwise, the remote system will simply revert to its default font for one of the defined CSS font family classes (sans-serif, serif, monospace, or cursive). I believe there used to be a fifth family called fantasy that is no longer part of the W3C definition for CSS font families.

Calibri would be a sans-serif font that but is not considered a safe font for HTML and CSS simply because it isn't available on certain systems at all (such as Linux for example). If you want to make sure your emails will always look identical regardless of what system your recipient is reading them on you should limit yourself to the fonts listed here: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_websafe_fonts.asp

 

[neutrino23]

Suggestion: Make a text clipping with something like a signature that you don't mind having in every email. Drag that to your new email to quickly add a snippet of formatted text.

To make a text clipping use almost any app (Pages, Keynote, TextEdit, ... ) and create a bit of formatted text. Select it, click on it an hold for a second or two and then drag that to the desktop. This creates a snippet of text including formatting. Text snippets are great. For some reason they preserve formatting even better than when using the clipboard.

When you create a new email drag this into the message field and you now have a formatted bit of text. You may need to find a convenient place to keep that. I put things like this on the desktop then I setup a hot corner in the Desktop preferences to reveal the desktop. I can hit the corner to reveal the desktop, pickup a document with the mouse, go back to that corner to recover whatever app I was in. Easy peasy.

 

[Mmmartin]

I don't believe you actually can. The problem is that every computer will have different fonts installed.

Well, if I am able to determine how my Signature looks, this means that I can also tell how the rest of the message content should look like, no?

Calibri - fine, agreed, changed to Verdana, but that does not change a thing - cause my Signature now is Verdana, but message content is 'whatever' because Mac Mail sends it out as plain text EVEN IF I have set Verdana as my default font, set defaults to Rich text and have formatted text as Verdana in the message itself...

Suggestion: Make a text clipping with something like a signature that you don't mind having in every email.

Thank you, but if I understand you correctly, that means extra actions every time I send an email!... Isn't there really a permanent solution to be found? Like, add some extra code within the signature file to determine the look of every outgoing mail or something?...

 

[BrianBaughn]

Can you upload a screenshot of an example of an email signature that would be acceptable to you?

 

[mj_]

The problem with Apple Mail is that it is incredibly unreliable in this regard. I find that it works best if I have my signature in either a different font, font size, or font weight than the main text. That way Mail is forced to send it out as rich text instead of plain text.

Try setting your signature to say Verdana 11 and your main body to Verdana 12 (or vice versa) and see if that helps. Alternatively, you could also add cursive or bold text to your signature, which should have the same effect.

 

[Mmmartin]

Try setting your signature to say Verdana 11 and your main body to Verdana 12 (or vice versa) and see if that helps. Alternatively, you could also add cursive or bold text to your signature, which should have the same effect.

I do not have an issue with Signature as I have forced its look with HTML in the signature file itself. That works and looks splendid. But how to force the actual message to be sent out as rich text and formatted the way I want? So far rich text on, Verdana as default and formatted inside message, and none of it works.

Can you upload a screenshot of an example of an email signature that would be acceptable to you?

Sure