[neilw]

I wonder if someone can shed some light on this problem. I find the world of email formatting to be strange and mysterious.

When I get HTML-formatted mail from Windows Outlook users, the text frequently comes up as 10 point Arial, which is tiny as viewed on the Mac. My #1 goal is to know if there is a way to advise such users to configure Outlook so that they

(a) send email that I can read without squinting
(b) don't have to manually enlarge the fonts on emails to me
(c) retain normal text formatting capabilities when exchanging email with other Outlook users.

I cannot ask them to use plain text only for outgoing emails, because then it defaults to Courier (on their systems, not Mail) and that looks like crap.

Or is there a setting on Mail that could fix things?

What's confusing is that I have received messages from the same user, some in plain text and some HTML. And I know they were not playing with their settings. So it seems like there are some conditions under which Outlook will send non-formatted email.

So is there any way to make these email clients play nice with each other? This isn't a really big deal, but it is a persistent annoyance.

[whoops, meant to post this in OSX Forum. Oh well, it's kind of borderline anyway...]

[cpac]

you posted in the right spot. Mail ? OSX

Anyway, I'd just get used to clicking the enlarge text button/key combination

You might also try upping your message font size in the Fonts & Colors preference pane.

trying to force other people to change their settings is not likely to be successful.

[neilw]

Anyway, I'd just get used to clicking the enlarge text button/key combination

Y'know, I don't think I noticed before that Mail "kind of" remembers the font viewing size for each email. I say "kind of" because I tried blowing up an email really large, then quit and restarted Mail, and it came up smaller than I had left it, but larger than its original size. Weird.

I'm even sorrier to say, but am reluctant to admit it in public, that I never realized you could use the font bigger/smaller for viewing mail. They're the only options in the Format menu that have an effect when viewing mail, even though others (Bold, Italic) are "enabled" as well. Does sort of render my question moot.

Live and learn.

You might also try upping your message font size in the Fonts & Colors preference pane.

That has no effect on viewing formatted mail.

trying to force other people to change their settings is not likely to be successful.

In general, true. In some specific cases, I could have "influence".

[cpac]

Originally posted by neilw:
I'm even sorrier to say, but am reluctant to admit it in public, that I never realized you could use the font bigger/smaller for viewing mail. They're the only options in the Format menu that have an effect when viewing mail, even though others (Bold, Italic) are "enabled" as well. Does sort of render my question moot.

Live and learn.

Just in case you didn't know - there are toolbar items to make text larger or smaller as well, these can be even handier than using the menu items.