First off, I'm using Office: Mac 2004.
1.) I have gone into preferences and set all my fonts to Helvetica,
yet I'm seeing Courier for the messages I'm receiving. Everyone knows
serif fonts are harder to read online.
If someone sends you mail using HTML, you see whatever font and formatting
they used, not your own default plain text font. From what follows below, it
sounds like you have a number of correspondents who send you HTML mail.
There are scripts which strip out HTML, but then you'd lose _all_
formatting, pictures, etc.
From what follows below, it sounds like you yourself may be sending HTML
mail by default. When recipients click Reply, their replies will come back
to you in HTML too = with their own font. If you really would prefer to see
Helvetica more regularly, send them Plain Text mail. Then when they reply it
will return to you (usually) as plain text too, unless they insist on HTML,
and you'll see Helvetica if that's what you've set for plain text mail. With
plain text mail, you see your own font setting even in received mail.
Except I have a sneaking feeling that maybe your preference for plain mail
might be set to Courier. Go to Entourage/Preferences/Fonts, and set _both_
Plain Text and HTML settings to Helvetica. Then go to the Compose preference
and consider making Plain Text your default Mail format. (I think it may be
so already, since your message here arrived as plain text. This particular
mailing list will display HTML if you choose to send it, and you haven't.)
From what follows in 3) below, it sounds as if maybe you hate HTML but have
your own replies set to Reply to messages in the format they were sent. So
if someone sends you an HTML message, you reply HTML as well, then the next
reply comes back to you again in HTML, with their font. You can insist on
plain text by going to Preferences/Reply & Forward, and unchecking the
"Reply to messages in the format they were sent". That means your replies
will always be in your default format - which you will have by now set to
plain text in "Compose" preference - forcing the conversation over to plain
text. Your correspondents may not appreciate that. It's usually more polite
to reply in the format sent, but it's up to you.
2.) When I send a message to a mailing list, and I see my email
posted, marks of punctuation like apostrophes and quotation marks are
replaced by a superscript number.
So it sounds like you yourself are sending HTML! Most mailing lists, other
than this one, cannot display HTML. It sounds as if you are sending HTML,
with Entourage's default settings in Tools/AutoCorrect/AutoFormat set to
"Replace straight quotes with smart quotes" and maybe also "Replace symbol
characters with symbols". Those "smart" characters are encoded differently
on Macs than on Windows . The simplest thing would be to not send HTML, but
to be safe and consistent just turn those two options OFF in
Tools/AutoCorrect/AutoFormat ,
3.) My reply quote characters in email replies is either not happening
at all, or is not being the colors they're supposed to.
Once again, the reply quote characters appear only in Plain Text, NOT in
HTML mail. In HTML, replies are denoted by indentation, not Reply
characters. So you can force the conversation into plain text, where you'll
see the font of your choice and Reply characters always, by setting your
default format to "Plain Text in Compose preference, and turning "Reply to
messages in the format sent" OFF in Reply & Forward preferences. But some of
your correspondents will resent you for doing that to them, when they prefer
formatted HTML text. Plain text strips out all formatting.
I have looked through the preferences several times, and I can't
figure out how to change these things.
Try the ones above.
Are these just Microsoft bugs? No! I refuse to believe it!
No, they're not Microsoft bugs, and they're not bugs at all. They show that
you're someone not accustomed to HTML mail.
This is making me want to scream.
Well, just be aware that if you force all correspondence into plain text, a
few of your correspondents may not be happy about it. But that's how to get
what you seem to want.
--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <
http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <
http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>
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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.
