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Line spacing in Mail.app

Doctor Q

Doctor Q

Administrator
Original poster
Staff member
Sep 19, 2002
40,341
9,076
Los Angeles
If I create a new message in Mail.app and start typing, the text is single spaced.

If I paste in text from a word processor, or quote someone else's message, I sometimes find that my text is 1-1/2 spaced or double-spaced. Can line spacing or leading be set or controlled from within a mail message?
 
Nearly a month later wonders if you have found a solution.

I have tried nearly everything I can think of to get around this but nothing seems to make a difference.

The one work around I have found to work is to type a small bit of text in a new message window and then use the "Paste and Match Style" (command+opt+shift+v).

Of course if you found a solution in the mean time I would love to hear it.
 
Nope, never found one. I have to paste the text unformatted (or "match style") into another window, and abandon the original message.
 
I'm resurrecting this thread with a solution. After having the same thing happen to me, I did some reading.

Basically it happens when you cut and paste from a html or webpage or from MS Word into a mail message. It arises from a mixup between html code / MS Word text formatting code and Apple's rich text message code.

The end result is that anything you type after the cut and paste is also double spaced.

Workarounds:

- change message format to plaintext (can't remember if this worked)

or

- paste into notepad / text edit and change to plain text then repaste into mail message

or

- type a bit more, or press return a couple of times, then paste into the middle of the text block, and continue typing from the end of the previously entered text, not from the end of the material you pasted. This means you are continuing with the original single-spaced format. Any editing of the pasted block will still come out double-spaced though.

HTH.
 
RedTomato said:
Workarounds:

- change message format to plaintext (can't remember if this worked)
Click to expand...
It doesn't work, at least for me.

Sometimes I can't get the other workaround to work either, because the entire message has the bad line-spacing setting. I end up creating a new email message and pasting in the text from TextEdit. That's a pain because I have to copy/paste or retype my Subject line. At least Mail lets you drag TO/CC/BCC names from one mail message to another.
 
Doctor Q said:
It doesn't work, at least for me.
Click to expand...
You might be right there. Sorry I'm not at my mac to check.
Sometimes I can't get the other workaround to work either, because the entire message has the bad line-spacing setting.
Click to expand...
If the first thing you do with a new message is paste something in, yes the bad spacing will be set for the entire message. You need to type something in first, then paste into the middle of the block, then continue typing from the end of the block that you first typed out. It's more work to describe than to do.

The best explanation, with code sample, is in this thread:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=67960
 
Mac Mail Line Spacing Workarounds

RedTomato said:
I'm resurrecting this thread with a solution. After having the same thing happen to me, I did some reading.

Basically it happens when you cut and paste from a html or webpage or from MS Word into a mail message. It arises from a mixup between html code / MS Word text formatting code and Apple's rich text message code.

The end result is that anything you type after the cut and paste is also double spaced.

Workarounds:

- change message format to plaintext (can't remember if this worked)

or

- paste into notepad / text edit and change to plain text then repaste into mail message

or

- type a bit more, or press return a couple of times, then paste into the middle of the text block, and continue typing from the end of the previously entered text, not from the end of the material you pasted. This means you are continuing with the original single-spaced format. Any editing of the pasted block will still come out double-spaced though.

HTH.
Click to expand...

There is one small workaround that I found for coping from MS Word into Mac Mail so that it does not double space. When creating a message in Word, do NOT use a "hard return", meaning, do NOT just hit the "Return" key to make a line return or a new paragraph. You must use a "Soft Return" to prevent double spacing when pasting text from MS Word into Mac Mail. So what is a "Soft Return" in Word? Hold down the "Shift" key while you hit the "Enter" key to create a soft return. Try this on a couple of paragraphs or better yet . . . several lines with a soft return between them versus a hard return. The result - no double spaces. As for the quoted text having double spaces? Not a clue . . .

AND

TextEdit has line spacing control. I have also used TextEdit to copy into, ajuist the line spacing, and then paste into Mac Mail. Good luck, and please post any new workarounds that you have learned since this original post. Apple is the greatest but at times they miss some of the most important simple THINGS WE NEED TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE!
 
same problem, but one workaround WORKS

I have had the same problem pasting from word and getting double spacing. I tried the soft return (Shift+return) and it didn't work.

What did work was pasting into a new doc in TextEdit, then selecting Format>Make Plain Text, then cutting and pasting that into Mail. Pastes as single space.

Thanks for the tip.
 
workaround

Read that "Control - Return" works to force single spacing. You can even correct text that is buggered that way.

Before that, I tried to put the text into plain text and it didn't work. I tried to put it in plain text in wordpad and it didn't work when pasting back in. something is whacked with the styling even though the default style is selected with a +1 line feed. Very strange.
 
A fix

Here is a fix for those for whom switching to plain text in Mail doesn't work. As with all fixes, its annoying, and I don't like it. It is just amazing that Apple haven't incorporated a proper text editing system (read Word/Pages) into Mail. Even Entourage is better! Using this fix, all your formatting will disappear, but so will that nasty spacing.

Copy whatever text you want from Word.
Go into Text Edit.
Go to preferences.
Select plain text.
Create a new Text Edit window.
Paste your text from Word.
Select your text and copy from Text Edit.
Paste into Mail.
 
vague,

You can simplify one step of your workaround. Instead of changing Text Edit preferences you can change the current window to plain text using a key combination. So it becomes:
  1. Copy whatever text you want from Word.
  2. Go into Text Edit.
  3. Create a new Text Edit window.
  4. Paste your text from Word.
  5. Press shift-command-T to make it plain text, if it's not already plain text.
  6. Select your text and copy from Text Edit.
  7. Paste into Mail.
 
cosmotion said:
I have had the same problem pasting from word and getting double spacing. I tried the soft return (Shift+return) and it didn't work.

What did work was pasting into a new doc in TextEdit, then selecting Format>Make Plain Text, then cutting and pasting that into Mail. Pastes as single space.

Thanks for the tip.
Click to expand...

I agree with everyone here, this is truly an ANNOYING problem in Mac Mail.

The soft return is actually control+return.. and i use it religiously.

I experience the text spacing problem when I cut and paste from say an internet web page or somewhere where there is rich text formatting... and then change the text of other lines. Then when I change my mind again about what to say and hit (return) the annoying double space demon appears.

There is a feature in Mac Mail called "Substitutions" with a setting of "smart copy/paste". I bring up the menu by right+click. Look under Substitutions.

So when you copy rich text from somewhere and paste it into a Mac Mail message, it keeps the HTML tags I assume. Say I paste an H2 tag

Well when you delete text in Mac Mail it doesn't always delete the formatting of that line. So even though your text LOOKS like it is 12pt Helvetica Regular, there is a phantom BOLD H2 tag there. So say you hit backspace when you make a manual bulleted list

-like
-this
-one

it will change to this on you when you hit the backspace/delete button.

-like
-this-one

This can be solved by reformatting the -one back to -one and then holding down CONTROL and hitting return.

Hope this helps!
 
I didn't realize others have had problems with this for so long, but I have run into this same issue many times. You would think Apple would make it simple to format email text, but apparently this issue has not been resolved in years. I know Gmail's web interface doesn't have this problem when I have tried to replicate it before.
 
I get line spacing problems when from mail alone. Can't believe this problem has not been fixed. I cannot even paste from other previous emails.:mad:

Did not have this problem in tiger, yet now on my new mac with os x lion I am having this silly problem :mad:.
 
Late in the day, but a simple solution

If you have iWork use Pages instead of Word. You can copy the entire document from Word into Pages and then use the Pages version to copy from.
 
Line spacing in Mail.app

I've found no way to change the leading (line spacing) in Mac Mail.
So, I often keep a blank TextEdit file open, into which I can paste any HTML, or Rich Text, or similarly formatted text. Then, I copy the text from TextEdit and paste it back into the e-mail.

IMPORTANT: In order for this to work, the TextEdit file has to be in Plain Text format.
Some people have their TextEdit default format (Prefs) set to Rich Text. Others might have it set to Plain Text. Once you've opened a blank TextEdit file, if it's not in Plain Text format, you can change it simply by going to the TextEdit main menu > Format > select "Make Plain Text."
 
A possible solution

It seems that if you either compose the mail in Pages, or paste the text from Word into Pages, and then copy to Mac Mail, the formatting works. I'm using Pages 5.5.2 and finding it overall good for the simple tasks I do. And overall it's a lot less infuriating than Word (and I've been a Word user since Word for Dos 3).
 
chinds1 said:
A possible solution

It seems that if you either compose the mail in Pages, or paste the text from Word into Pages, and then copy to Mac Mail, the formatting works. I'm using Pages 5.5.2 and finding it overall good for the simple tasks I do. And overall it's a lot less infuriating than Word (and I've been a Word user since Word for Dos 3).
Click to expand...

THANK YOU! I'd just about given up finding a solution for this until I saw your post.
 
Thank you so much. This worked for me, I just used a different Text Editor to copy and paste. I am so grateful that I went and got myself an account on this forum just so I could say Thank You.

RedTomato said:
Basically it happens when you cut and paste from a html or webpage or from MS Word into a mail message. It arises from a mixup between html code / MS Word text formatting code and Apple's rich text message code.
...
- paste into notepad / text edit and change to plain text then repaste into mail message
HTH.
Click to expand...
 
Here's a macro workaround for Word I made for myself. It's titled, Mail_No_Indent, and meant for documents with no indent and spaces between paragraphs. It opens a new document, pastes in in any text you have highlighted in the original document, then converts paragraph marks to line feeds and removes extra trailing spaces and paragraphs put in by the search/replace. It then copies the repaired file to the clipboard, ready to paste into mail, and closes the new document.

There's a second macro titled, Mail_Indent. It's meant for paragraphs with indentation. It operates the same way as the other macro except that it adds five spaces at the opening of each paragraph to replace the indentation that Mail strips off (You need at least one formatted paragraph for mail to add indent, but that places a blank line after it). =sigh=

To install the macros, copy the code I've provided into the visual basic editor, below below any macros you've created. If you have no macros now, you need to record one, to create the file to paste the code into (a single character followed by a line feed, as a macro, is plenty. Use whatever you care to for the macro name). Then, under the Tools/Macro menu, select: Open Visual Basic Editor, then replace the macro you created with what's at the bottom, here. If there is no window with code showing: on the left, select "New Macros under "modules" and it will appear.

To make the new macros more convenient to use, I added push buttons to them on the menu bar in Word 2011, (2016 doesn't support that, for which I curse them daily). To do that, right click the menu bar and select: Customize Toolbars and Menus, then drag the macros to the toolbar. Finally, right click to select properties for each button, to name them and pick an icon. With that done, it's now a matter of highlight text, push the button, and paste from the clipboard into mail. No more complex than highlight and copy, just as fast, but no more extra blank lines.

This code works for me on both 2011 and 2016, and it's actually easier to do than read about, but...you know Microsoft, so I make no guarantees.

The code:

Sub Mail_Indent()
'
' This will fix formatting to paste into email and add a 5 space indent, wirth no space between lines.
'
Selection.Copy
Documents.Add DocumentType:=wdNewBlankDocument
Selection.TypeText Text:=" "
Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdPasteDefault)
Selection.WholeStory
With Selection.ParagraphFormat
.LeftIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.RightIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.SpaceBefore = 0
.SpaceBeforeAuto = False
.SpaceAfter = 0
.SpaceAfterAuto = False
.LineSpacingRule = wdLineSpaceSingle
.WidowControl = True
.KeepWithNext = False
.KeepTogether = False
.PageBreakBefore = False
.NoLineNumber = False
.FirstLineIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.OutlineLevel = wdOutlineLevelBodyText
End With
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^p"
.Replacement.Text = "^l "
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.WholeStory
Selection.Copy
ActiveWindow.Close savechanges:=False
End Sub
Sub Mail_No_Indent()
'
' This will fix formatting to paste into email and add no indent or added line spaces.
'
Selection.Copy
Documents.Add DocumentType:=wdNewBlankDocument
Selection.PasteAndFormat (wdPasteDefault)
With Selection.ParagraphFormat
.LeftIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.RightIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.SpaceBefore = 0
.SpaceBeforeAuto = False
.SpaceAfter = 0
.SpaceAfterAuto = False
.LineSpacingRule = wdLineSpaceSingle
.WidowControl = True
.KeepWithNext = False
.KeepTogether = False
.PageBreakBefore = False
.NoLineNumber = False
.FirstLineIndent = InchesToPoints(0)
.OutlineLevel = wdOutlineLevelBodyText
End With
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^p"
.Replacement.Text = "^l"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.TypeBackspace
Selection.WholeStory
Selection.Copy
ActiveWindow.Close savechanges:=False
End Sub
 
JayGreenstein said:
Here's a macro workaround for Word I made for myself. It's titled, Mail_No_Indent, and meant for documents with no indent and spaces between paragraphs...

There's a second macro titled, Mail_Indent. It's meant for paragraphs with indentation...
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing these macros. They can help a lot of users who have these routine requirements.
 
cosmotion said:
same problem, but one workaround WORKS

I have had the same problem pasting from word and getting double spacing. I tried the soft return (Shift+return) and it didn't work.

What did work was pasting into a new doc in TextEdit, then selecting Format>Make Plain Text, then cutting and pasting that into Mail. Pastes as single space.

Thanks for the tip.
Click to expand...

BUT "Make Plain Text" removes more than unwanted spacing. It removes italics and bold.
[doublepost=1547926773][/doublepost]WORD adds two extra spaces between paragraphs when you paste it into something else. There MUST be a way to turn that off. IN WORD.
 
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