Love it or hate it, HTML in emails is here to stay, and people will send you HTML emails even if you ask them not to. Apple Mail can display the HTML emails you receive, although it can’t compose them.
Here are three tips for dealing with HTML email in Apple Mail depending on your level of aversion.
1. Kill HTML Completely
If you really can’t stand it, you can just banish HTML forever. Quit Apple Mail and type the following into the Terminal:
All your email will now appear in plain text. No more fancy HTML emails from Apple about the new features in .Mac for you!
2. Toggle Views
Number 1 seems too extreme to me, like King Canute standing on the seashore trying to hold back the tide. So I like to toggle.
Emails often contain the message embedded within it in a number of formats. By default Apple Mail will display the email’s HTML content first if it exists, then the Rich Text content if HTML is not available. Lastly it will display plain text is there is nothing else.
You can view the plain text version using the keyboard shortcut “Command+Option+P”, or toggle through the available formats using “Command+]” and “Command+[”
My mother, bless her, uses Outlook Express. Her emails often appear in such small text in Apple Mail, that viewing the plain text version (which OE always includes) is the only way to read her messages without squinting.
3. Turn off images in HTML emails
Spammers use images to detect real addresses. When your client starts to download an image – often an invisibly small transparent one – they know that they have found a real person. That’s bad.
In the Apple Mail Preferences go to the Viewing pane and uncheck the “Display remote images in HTML messages” option. You will have an option in the Preview Pane to download them if it turns out to be an email from someone you trust.
[...] I have written before about the eye-bending frustration of small font sizes in Apple Mail. [...]
[...] For Apple Mail users, it offers a pane full of extra options. It allows you to set a “Prefer Plain Text” option (which saves you having to do this) but most of the check boxes enable the logging of various events in Mail.app: Obviously a record of these events is interesting in itself (to me anyway!), but it might also be useful in troubleshooting. [...]
Thanks for these wonderful tips. However, I’ve noticed that for some html messages (I’m assuming they’re in html, because they contain formatting), typing command-option-p or command-{ / command-] does nothing and causes the system sound to play.
Any idea why?
Hmmm… They might be Rich Text and not HTML but that still shouldn’t stop Mail from cycling through the available views with the keyboard shortcuts.
When you say formatting, do mean that the hyperlinks and email addresses are underlined? Mail will do that for plain text messages, so it might be that they are plain text after all, and you get the “boing!” because there is no other view format to switch to.
No, there were font sizes and other things. But I turns out that the messages that it wasn’t possible to display in plain text mode were ones that I converted from Eudora — and when receiving two-part html and plain text messages, Eudora apparently only keeps the html :(
By the way, where did you learn of the
defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 13
command? It’s terrific!
As a trick, if you need to compose html emails, and you’re experienced enough to do so, code your html email as you would and post it to your server (remember, email html is lightyears behind proper, standards html, so you won’t win awards, and there are many hacks you will need to do to work it across differing clients, but that’s another post entirely), remember to use absolute URL’s.
In Safari, load the page, then go File > Mail Contents of this page, and it’ll show up as your proper html via email for you to send out as your heart desires.
Thanks for the info. As a new Mac user, I’m really enjoying your blog…
You’re welcome. :)
Using option 1 does not prevent you from toggling through formats. So, I have prefer plain text on (as I do prefer it), but for some mail I use -] to switch to the alternate format. More important than avoiding HTML is to prevent automatic downloading of remote images. This allows people (including spammers) to track when you view their mail: very valuable info, as it tells them the mail didn’t get junked.
-Geert
Does the ‘Kill HTML Completely’ tip still apply in the latest version of Mail?
I just ran the command, but I’m still seeing HTML formatted mail, and the Command-] and Command-Option-P shortcuts don’t work (and their equivalents in the View menu are greyed-out).
Annoying – I’ve just upgraded to a MacBook, and practically the first thing I did was Google for this tip!
Oops – ignore me. It took a restart to make the changed preference stick, but I’m back in the land of plain text again now.
I hope someone can help! I recently upgraded my G4 to Tiger and it seems that around that time my Apple Mail started acting up. Some images refuse to load in HTML emails. In Preferences, I’ve checked the “Display remote images in HTML messages” box so the images should ALL be loading automatically. Instead, for some images I get the white question mark in the blue box. Also, I never get the “Load Images” option. My MacBook Pro laptop which came with Tiger loaded on it has no problem with the same images so I know it’s not my internet connection. Should I try to reload Apple Mail? (As a side note my Safari is really screwed up and I wonder if that might be affecting my Apple Mail…) Any suggestions would be MUCH appreciated!
“I’ve checked the “Display remote images in HTML messages†box so the images should ALL be loading automatically.”
I’m sure you know that enabling that opens a user to the possibility that any sender whose message incorporates remote images can see whether the message has been opened or not, which is a privacy concern, but I’ll note that for the sake of anyone who reads this but doesn’t know.
“Should I try to reload Apple Mail? (As a side note my Safari is really screwed up and I wonder if that might be affecting my Apple Mail…)”
They both use webkit for rendering. I’m reluctant to give troubleshooting advice on Tim’s blog, since it’s not there for that, but did you try creating a new user account and seeing if the problem manifested itself there as well?
I suspect you might be stuck with an archive and reinstall:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120
However, before doing so, i’d suggest asking about your problem on Apple’s forums:
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa
HTH
Maybe this is not the right place to drop this but I still want to try.
Did any of you had troubles viewing your own Apple Mail messages at work (or anywhere else) in Outlook 2003?
For example, when I send an e-mail message written in Apple Mail with the use of Helvetica font I can only reed that message in Outlook in Times New Roman font, size 12 or bigger.(it get’s converted somehow)
I also tryed Arial and Lucida Grande and the effect was the same…all of them where converted to Times New Roman.
When I check the same message on Gmail server then it seems all right.
I guess Outlook and HTML within is the cause of all this trouble but is there a solution for the problem? Can I “tell” Apple Mail to use the right HTML format somehow?
It’s really great. But I’m a question. If I want it is possible to come back to default settings? How? Thanks a lot and congratulations for the blog.