View missing text in Mail.app messages
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006Over in the macOSXHints forum, highlandlaker wonders why text is missing 
from his emails:
I am using Mail 2.0 and System 10.4.5. Occasionally I receive an email message that is truncated. The first two or three sentences appear okay then it stops …. dead in its tracks !! Has anyone else experienced this anomaly and what can I do to correct it?
Some people on the Apple Discussion board have a similar problem.
Often (but not always) this is the result of a HTML rendering glitch in Mail.app. Mail is trying to render the message but can’t. The rest of the text is there, you just can’t see it.
If this happens to you, the fix is simple.
Emails often contain their text in a variety of formats. By default Apple Mail will display an 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.
If the HTML is not rendering properly, you can “force” Mail to show the plain text version using the keyboard shortcut “Command-Option-Pâ€, or toggle through the available formats using “Command-]†and “Command-[â€. Most likely, the text will appear as you cycle through the available views.
Hawk Wings has some more tips for dealing with HTML emails.
Tags: empty messages, HTML, keyboard shortcuts, missing text, plain text, rendering