Complicated solution to Mail.app’s broken hyperlinks
As everyone knows, Mail has an annoying habit of formatting hyperlinks so that they “break” when viewed in many other email clients.
You can read about this and why it happens in an earlier Hawk Wings post.
A poster on macOSXHints offers a complicated way around 
the the problem.
He recommends pasting in the hyperlink, then hitting space to turn it into a hyperlink. (This only works if you are composing in Mail’s “Rich Text” format).
Then he suggests typing “Click here” somewhere within the resulting hyperlink and deleting the rest of the hyperlink text to leave a hyperlinked “Click here”. He calls this “a small amount of work for a better presentation”.
There is an easier way. Just type “Click here” (or possibly something short but more informative) to begin with, highlight the text and then choose “Add Hyperlink…” from Mail’s Edit menu (or “Edit link” from the Contextual Menu that appears when you Control-click or right-click on the highlighted text). Paste in your URL. You’re done.
This is Hawk Wings’ Work around number two for broken hyperlinks, and will work well for people who use Rich Text. If you are composing in Plain Text, it will automatically switch your message to the Rich Text format.
People like me, who prefer to compose in plain text will want to consider Work around number one, using a service like TinyURL or SnipURL .
Some of my Windows-using workmates dislike clicking on SnipURL links as they can’t see in advance where the link will go, but they dislike it less than the broken links Mail otherwise produces in Thunderbird and Outlook.
Tags: Apple Mail, broken hyperlinks, mail.app, Productivity, tinyURL, URLs, workaroundsRelated posts
March 24th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Though the method above - using “Edit> Add Hyperlink” may only be visible in Rich Text capable clients - unlike what is “seemed” to be suggested above - this method WILL work in Plan Text composing mode also in Mail - it just changes the formatting to Rich Text (apparently - since the Format > Make Rich Text is still available.
AM
March 24th, 2007 at 11:04 am
So it does! I never even thought to try.
Thanks for pointing that out.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:26 am
With TinyURL there us an option (after creating the TinyURL) to send the TinyURL that then goes to a page and shows the original long URL before clicking, so the “hidden” URL is no longer an issue.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Neat. But I am in two minds whether this “double-handling” is going to make me any more popular around the office.
Some Windows users are never satisfied ;-)
March 24th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Doesn’t enclosing the URL in angle brackets solve it?
E.g.
March 24th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
I thought you could just wrap the URL in less-than and greater-then ‘brackets’?
eg
??
March 24th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Except that ” dpn’t show up in comments :-/
March 24th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I give up.
March 24th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I’m amazed at the constant bashing of Windows users regarding this issue when it’s clearly mail.app F*ing up here.
It doesn’t matter that it follows an RFC and everybody else doesn’t - that’s just an arrogant attitude.
March 24th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Tom — it’s a more complicated scenario than you describe, I think.
The Delsp option used by Mail is in the RFC, so Apple is following the standard. The problem is that no one else is.
This raises an interesting philosophical question about the nature of RFCs (should they codify what everyone does or what everyone should do?) but doesn’t help Mail users out of their predicament.
March 25th, 2007 at 12:45 am
“The Delsp option used by Mail is in the RFC, so Apple is following the standard. The problem is that no one else is.”
That’s not true. Cyrus Daboo has fixed Mulberry Mail so that it now follows the standards. Opera Mail certainly does as well. So credit where it’s due. It’s possible that others do, too, but I don’t know the capabilities of everything out there.
Of course, if we are waiting on *Microsoft* to fix its software, we may be in for a very long wait. IE is a case in point. It can now–finally–deal with alpha-transparency in PNGs, and how long has that taken? But its CSS-handling, and much else besides, is still *years* out-of-date.
March 25th, 2007 at 8:43 am
What’s wrong with using < and > symbols around the links? That’s always worked for me.
March 26th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I wish Apple would fix this — even if it means breaking RFC compliance. Simply digging in their heels and waiting will -not- magically convince Microsoft to implement it in Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Mail, which, let’s face it, are used by the vast majority of people Mac users are emailing.
In fact I’m jack of the fact that URLs break so much all time time in all mail clients. Why is that Microsoft can take six years to create a new version of Windows and totally redesign the user interface of Office 2007 and STILL NOT BE ABLE TO HANDLE BROKEN URLS ELEGANTLY!?
How can we put man on the moon, hook up massive computing grids and create Pixar movies, and yet still not be able to solve one of the most basic problems in computing: broken URLs in emails? It’s BLOODY ANNOYING!
March 26th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
@Clair - that’s exactly what I was trying to say! I just couldn’t get those symbols to reproduce in the comments field! Thanks for a glimmer of sanity!
March 26th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
“I wish Apple would fix this”
It is not they, nor others who are also following RFC3676, who need to fix their implementation: it isn’t broken.
The standard format=flowed, as described in RFC2646, exists so that text can be easily re-flowed whatever the size of the display. It was originally a suggestion made by the Eudora people–and that’s not surprising since Qualcomm had a hand in cellphones:
http://joeclark.org/ffaq.html
There is a reason for the change, that RFC376 brings, too:
“The newer technique, suitable for use even with languages/coded character sets in which the ASCII space character is rare or not used, creates a soft line break by inserting a SP CRLF sequence. When this technique is used, the DelSp parameter MUST be used and MUST be set to “yes”.”
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt
Apple and Opera seem to have no problems doing as suggested.
Neither does Mulberry:
http://trac.mulberrymail.com/mulberry/ticket/5
KDE’s Kontact has it marked as a bug to fix:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92591
What are software developers to say? “Hard luck if your language is one in which in which ‘the ASCII space character is rare or not used’, because we’re going to ignore the means that have been devised specifically to help you.”?
April 10th, 2007 at 7:29 am
The opening paragraph ought to be corrected. It’s not Mail.apps fault that other clients are brain-dead. You’re pointing the finger the wrong direction, Hawk Wings.