The Dangers of Rich Text
Using Rich Text Format can also mean that the recipients don't see all this formatting fancy, though, and have to decipher your messages from a lot of funny (strange) characters.
Fortunately, this unfortunate situation is easy to avoid in Mac OS X Mail: make sure a message is sent in plain text only — certain to be displayed properly in every email program for every recipient.
Send a Message in Plain Text with Mac OS X Mail
To send an email using but plain text from Mac OS X Mail:
- Compose the message as usual in Mac OS X Mail.
- Before clicking Send, select Format | Make Plain Text from the menu.
- If you cannot find this menu item (but Format | Make Rich Text instead), your message is already in plain text and you don't need to change anything.
- If an Alert pops up, click OK.
Make Plain Text Your Default
If you find you send plain text emails frequently in Mac OS X Mail, you can avoid switching to plain text each time and make it the default instead.
