Changing Link and Text Colors

M

Mark Vogel

I've just switched to Entourage 2004 after Apple Mail lost a month
supply of email for the fourth time!

I have a problem which limits my ability to read blue text. Many
incoming messages arriving in blue text. I think this is related to
the default quote level color in Outlook being blue (many of
correspondees use Outlook). Is there anyway to automatically have
Entourage change the blue text to another color? Perhaps a script or
some style sheet I can't find?

Also, I really need to change the color of the hyperlinks in emails
from blue to another color. Is this possible?
 
D

Dayo Mitchell

I'm in 2001, but since you got no answer, some things to try....

You should be able to change the way Entourage displays quoted text in the
Preferences, under Mail & News, View tab. You can set the colors yourself.

I tried very hard to get Entourage 2001 to change the blue links. I didn't
see anything in Preferences. It doesn't pick up the level one quoting
color. It doesn't pick up the Hyperlink style in Word. It doesn't pick up
the Internet Preferences in OS 9. I couldn't think of anything else to test
(but I now have a very colorful screen). It is just barely conceivable that
improvements in Entourage 2004 allow you to customize that, you could run
the same checks I ran to see. If not, definitely make a feature request via
Help | Send Feedback.
 
P

Paul Berkowitz

What Dayo recommends applies to quoted text for Plain Text. If you change
your quote settings in Preferences/Mail & News/View, so that the first level
of quoted text is not blue, that will solve the problem _for plain text_
viewing.

But I think what Mark may be referring to HTML text. HTML displays the
colors - and all other formatting - the way the sender wrote and sent it,
and can't be altered by the reader. Mark refers to "the default quote level
color in Outlook being blue". Actually, there's some sort of Outlook Windows
bug which determines that any text - not just replies - written in Arial -
arrive in a particularly lurid shade of blue.

The only way to get rid of HTML blue would be to replace HTML by plain text.
That's possible to do by AppleScript, and I think Allen Watson has written
one, which must be up at

MacScripter.net <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Basically, this will do it:

----------------------

tell application "Microsoft Entourage"
set theMsg to item 1 of (get current messages)
if has html of theMsg then set content of theMsg to (get content of
theMsg)
end tell

--------------------------


If you save that in Script Editor as a Script named

Strip HTML \cmH

and save it to the Entourage Script Menu Items folder in
~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/, then typing control-command-H when you're
viewing such a message will turn it into a plain text message
(irreversibly). You can use a different keyboard shortcut following the
guide in the Entourage Help/About the Script menu. You could even set up a
Rule to do this on messages as they come in, but you might be sorry in some
cases if you did that.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
 
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