rich text/HTML not displaying in Mail

[lemac]

Hello everyone,

Mail has recently stopped displaying rich text or html content in my 2 POP accounts. Incoming messages display properly in Entourage but not in Mail. I can send rich text messages but when I view them in the Sent folder the formatting is all gone. Recipients get them fine.

I tested Mail with 2 backups, one done just before the 10.6.4 update about a week ago. Rich text was gone then. However, rich text was displaying with the backup done 2 weeks earlier. I don't know what caused the problem and I am not sure when it started.

I am really scratching my head on this. Preferences seem fine. I rebuilt mailboxes, created a new account to no avail. Am I missing something here? Any help would be appreciated.

MacBook 2.2 GHz
4 GB RAM
10.6.4
Mail 4.3 (1081)

 

[Whitehill]

With a message selected, go to menu View / Message. If the bottom item, Best Alternative, is available, select it and tell us what happens.

If it's grayed out, well ...

 

[lemac]

Yep, the "Best Alternative" option does bring back the HTML format for the selected message, at least temporarily. It goes away when I come back to it after a while or when I reopen Mail. To make things more confusing I just got one message with rich text displaying properly. It seems to happen once in while, randomly.

 

[lemac]

Thanks Whitehill for the workaround but I hope I won't be stuck with this problem. There should a reason why rich text no longer displays automatically. Any new insights, anyone?

 

[lemac]

Oh boy this problem took me a long way unnecessarily. After reloading the 10.6.4 update, reinstalling 10.6 and the 10.6.4 update again, playing with every file of the User/Library/Mail folder I could still not get the thing to work. I finally discovered the culprit: Mail preference file (com.apple.mail.plist) in the User/Library/Preferences folder was corrupted. Why did I not think of that little guy before and save hours of headaches?

 

[Whitehill]

Why did I not think of that little guy before and save hours of headaches?

If you come up with an answer, please post it here in 36 pt type. Whenever I have a problem, nine times out of ten it could be traced back to this issue.