Cannot set font colors in Mail

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slrman

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I am trying to set up my standard font for messages I create as Comic Sans MS in a dark blue color. The Comic Sans font and size appears fine, but, no matter what I do, or how many times or ways I select the color I want, it is always black. When I open the fonts and colors window, the little color square is always a pale green. When I click it, the color wheel/graph/bar comes up and I select what I want, but nothing ever changes.

The only way I can change it is to select it in the message and then set color. While that works, it is a PITA to do it every time, especially when I know I should be able to make it my default font.

So where am I going wrong? Am I going to be humiliated again by something really simple? (probably) :o
 
There's really no way to do that in Mail.app currently, other than little workarounds.

Not only that, but if you were to write me an email in that (God-awful, sorry!) font and color, on my end when I received it, it would still be Courier, 12pt., black type. Because that's how I have my Mail.app set up.

Here's a link to an Apple discussion with others who would like to compose hideously-colored emails with fonts that are horrible to read and are running into the same roadblock (thank God!):
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=5797041

This is only my opinion (well, and the opinion of the guys who invented email), but email is for text. Plain text. No formatting. No fonts. No font sizes. No colors. All of those things are to be determined by the recipient. If one recipient wants to read email in 16pt. Courier, they can. If another wants to read it in 12pt. Times, they can. It's up to the recipient -- not the sender -- how an email message should look.
 
Well, at least I have not overlooked something obvious. But, despite what you say, I will never send an email in anything like Courier. You have your opinion, but I have mine. Courier is an antique font that didn't even look good on the typewriters on the 1930's, much less on the advanced systems of today.

I also doubt that the programmers at Apple decided not to allow fonts like Comic Sans MS because they have included over 100 fonts as standard. Some are even more unreadable that courier, hard as that it to believe. LOL

Now, if you had said that Microsoft determined what users could do or not do, that would make sense. The company is so arrogant that they don't believe any user could possible know what they really want. Just one more reason to choose apple.

Speaking of that, I ran my Windows flight simulator today and was getting three times the frame rate I got on a PC with 2 3 GHZ P4 processors and an Nvidia Geoforce 5200 video card and 2 GB of RAM. So much for those that say the MAc can't run games. :rolleyes:
 
slrman said:
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I also doubt that the programmers at Apple decided not to allow fonts like Comic Sans MS because they have included over 100 fonts as standard. Some are even more unreadable that courier, hard as that it to believe. LOL

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Your attitude reminds me of the early days of the Mac when users produced documents with text in 15 different fonts on a page. Quality design is making the best use of the resources at your disposal. It is not using everything you have just because you have it.

You have so missed ElDiabloConCaca's point. He explained to you how email formatting works. You would not be the first novice who wasted his time trying to foist hard-formatted messages on his recipients. You will not be the last. And, you will not be successful.

Something of a workaround is to send HTML mail. However, many people consider HTML mail to be an abomination. Even there, it is up to the recipient to decide how his email client handles HTML mail.

The strongest guarantee that your recipient will receive your correspondence in the format that you want is to send PDF files as attachments. My advice, however, is don't.
 
MisterMe, I am ROFLMAO. As usual on the internet, any time you say anything, there is someone who will jump out from under their rock and tell you why what you think is wrong and why what they think is so much better.

Obviously, you know nothing at all about me. So let's try to educate you a little. I have spent over 30 years as a technical writer and publications manager. As such, I probably know far more about typography and using fonts and style in publications that you will ever know.

Furthermore, I was also likely using Macs while you were still in diapers, so I do not need any lectures from you on not using multiple fonts in emails.

I am far from a novice and I do not "foist hard-formatted messages" on my recipients. I was asking a simple question and as usual, some idiot tries to make a federal case out of it by making ignorant, uninformed comments.

Yes, I am offended and rightly so. Do us both a favor and stop reading anything I post, much less responding. Then you will not get replies like this that show you to be the arrogant fool that makes those posts.

FWIW, emails are not for text-only. If that were true, why would it be possible to include graphics, photographs, (no, they are not the same thing) and videos? Why would the creators of email programs even make it possible? It is easy to globalize from your own opinion, but perhaps one should consider that not everyone, or even most, would agree.
 
slrman said:
But, despite what you say, I will never send an email in anything like Courier.
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My point was that it matters not what font nor colors you compose your email in -- if you sent me an email in blue Comic Sans font, on my end, it would still be black Courier. There are many, many, many internet and email users out there the same as I. I was trying to make the point that email formatting, for the most part, is determined by the recipient... not the sender.

I also doubt that the programmers at Apple decided not to allow fonts like Comic Sans MS because they have included over 100 fonts as standard. Some are even more unreadable that courier, hard as that it to believe. LOL
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Just because a font is included with an operating system does not mean that it's a good font in which to compose emails. Zapf Dingbats is also included -- would you consider that a good font to compose an email in?

Speaking of that, I ran my Windows flight simulator today and was getting three times the frame rate I got on a PC with 2 3 GHZ P4 processors and an Nvidia Geoforce 5200 video card and 2 GB of RAM. So much for those that say the MAc can't run games. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
I haven't heard anyone in 10 years say the Mac can't run games -- I think that line of thinking is similar to the line of thinking of, "Macs are for graphics, PCs are for spreadsheets." Neither of those adages are true -- I think the whole "no games on Mac" came about simply because there were less games for Mac available than there were for PC... it wasn't a technological limitation of any sort, it was just that the Mac platform was not extremely popular, and therefore, not many games were ported over to it (although we did have a lot of Mac-only games -- Ambrosia software was a lifesaver back in the day).

At any rate, I didn't mean to insult (although I won't take back my comment that Comic Sans is an absolutely horrible font for emails -- science and experience has proven that serif fonts are easier to read and less stressful on the eyes), I just wanted to give a differing point of view. I'd hate for you to spend a significant amount of time formatting your email messages just the way you like only to find out that the end user isn't experiencing the awesomeness of blue Comic Sans like you are.
 
Diablo (I think we are on first names now, right? :D ) Thanks for your well-worded and coherent reply.

I am aware that many email programs do use the fonts the user determines, but others allow you to use the formatting the sender uses. Personally, if someone goes the the trouble of trying to make an email attractive and easy to read, I will allow that. But if they use silly stationary and a lot of excess junk, I don't care for that. Some do, I know. That's certainly their privilege, but it's not for me.

I have heard that saying about serif fonts being easier to read for decades now. But, I have yet to see even one study showing it to be true. As making technical manual, or anything else, easy to read and understand has been a concern of mine, I have put quite a bit of effort into fonts and those studies seem to be, shall we say, "elusive"?

I know that most people have figured out that Macs and PCs are simply devices to crunch ones and zeros. If one is good at doing them for spreadsheets, it will be good at doing them for graphics too and vice-versa. But it was only yesterday that I received an email criticizing my choice of a Mac and showing Mac games as a Mario brothers type of 2D game and a PC game as a screen shot of WoW or something similar. This was from a person who should have known better but a lot of people still buy into old, unsubstantiated things even though the evidence otherwise is overwhelming. That reminds me of one of my Universal Truths. "Man's most precious possessions are his illusions. He will often sacrifice his belongings, his family, and even his life before his illusions."

I respect your right to like or not like a particular font. I also agree that using too many fonts in any document is counter-productive to good communication. For that matter so is excessive use of emphasis such as italics, bold, or underlining. When too many things are emphasized, nothing stands out. That is one of the first things I have always had to teach beginning writers.

I see the a similar thing in amateur videos. Every change in scene is done with a different transition effect. But if you watch professional videos and movies, you don't see many transitions at all and very rarely something like screen wipes, swirls, and the rest. A very short overlap fade is what is used most often and even that, not very much.

So it's very true what you say about just because something is available, it doesn't mean you should use all of it. They are there to provide a choice, not to see how many you can include in one short document or video.

As we say here, Cuprimentos,

Jim
 
I confess I am having the same problem.

Having just migrated from PCs after 20 years I find it odd that my emails do not display correctly as drafted on recipients PCs when sent from mail.app.

I had no such issue when sending email from Outlook ie: email appeared on recipients PCs as I drafted it; and since the people I send email to have not altered their settings since I started using a Mac, I can only hypothesise that it's just the way mail.app works.

Perhaps I too am inexperienced somewhat because I do not recall any special setting in Outlook to determine how to view incoming emails (other than block hotlinks) - but I do recall in the Options you could set how you compose messages (ie: plain text, RTF, HTML).

This is particularly frustrating because we have a corporate standard email font and colour and I am now using messy workarounds to correctly format email [Insert Sig and start typing on the line directly above].

Any constructive, non condescending ideas are most welcome :)
 
As a newby to Apple and with the wish to colour my font in my emails, I take it that nothing has changed and there is no straight forward way of setting a default colour?

Regards DF
 
There is the option for setting color for the text in Mail.

If it's not showing for you in the new mail message (with the other buttons such as media browser), Format > Show Colors.
(and Format > Show Fonts for the fonts).

Still please don't ever consider sending emails using Comic Sans. I (and not just I) will plainly put never be able to take anyone using Comic Sans seriously especially in the context of work life or business. Yes, that includes also my managers and those higher ups in the business food chain.

Also I don't in restaurants where the name of the restaurant or the menu uses comic sans.
And I would never date (or anything more serious than that) anyone whose font of choice that is.
 
Right considering the heated discussion above I had a look at Comic Sans, yupp it does look like a toddler scribbling therefore you won't get any argument from me to ban said font. Thanks for pointing out how to change colours, though I did manage so far, but my question wasn't maybe specific enough.

Is there a way of setting the colour to default so when I am composing a message I don't have to change the colour first or at the end.

I mean for example I would like to have my emails set up so they always automatically on my end look blue and have Trebuchet as a font. Once set up I would only ever have to worry about writing the email instead of constantly changing things.

Am I being clear enough?
 
In Mail > Preferences > Fonts and Colors you can pick the font. In the selection of the font from that small window in theory you can also pick a color but that doesn't in practice stay for the new composed messages.

But as a workaround how about this?

Set in Mail > Preferences > Signatures a new signature that uses the desired font and color (deselecting the option "Always match my default message font"), and save it for the email account you want to use.

Pick that signature for the new messages, and even if you don't want to use it as a signature - just keep typing around it as that color and font selection both do does stay.
 
Thanks for that reply.

I have been doing as you suggested, using the signature.

But I thought that wasn't really a clean way of doing things and in my humble opinion not the Apple way, but hey ho.

Maybe Apple don't want us to have coloured fonts / text because it ain't as sleep as their products.
 
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