Is it possible to add my own stationary to Mail? Does it have to be in a certain format (and size) and where does it go so it shows up when I press the Show Stationary tab? thanks, Rick

Yes, you can add your own stationery to Mail. For a basic overview of how to do so, go to the Menu/ Help while you are in Mail - and type in "Using stationery in messages" into the search field.

If you want to delve deeper into customizing your own template, you may be able use other programs to create an HTML document. I started to dabble with doing so awhile back, but never had the need to actually finish the attempt. Since the stationery template is basically an HTML document, the following programs might work - Pages, InDesign, Dreamweaver or other web design program. You've aroused my curiosity about this, and I may delve into it again myself. If I find a viable solution, I'll post the info.

Rick,

I did some nosing around and found this link for creating Custom Mail Stationery .

I haven't actually tried it yet, but I did quickly read it. Makes total sense so far. Apparently, this was done without the use of any additional programs (ex: Dreamweaver).

Rick,

It works.

I followed the steps in the link that I provided earlier. Worked flawlessly. The only programs that I used were TextEdit - and Photoshop to edit the images (you can use any image editor to create/save the needed .jpg and .gif files). I did NOT use Dreamweaver, though I'm certain that I could create an HTML stationery file from scratch, and save it out as the "content.html" file. I suspect that I could even incorporate CSS into the HTML file.

Cool stuff. I'm glad that you posted the original question so that I could finally resolve it for myself.

I don't know how often that I'd personally use the custom stationery or any of the others, as the files can start to get a touch large. My test rendered a 134k file, which isn't too bad. Depending on your proposed usages for custom templates, it could be a good solution for out-of-the-ordinary-looking emails.

A super easy way to do it is built right into the iLife suite using iWeb:

Launch iWeb> create a new site for each piece of stationary> publish to folder (choose any location you want I recommend the docs folder)> after publishing, iWeb will ask if you would like to visit site> choose yes and it will open in Safari> in the Safari menu bar choose "email contents of this page".

If you want to save the stationary for future use: choose file "save as stationary" in Mail.

Enjoy!!

Linda

Using iWeb is probably easier. But, I think that there are a few differences between using iWeb and the scheme I tried to create the stationery. I've never used iWeb, so I can't be sure. It's my understanding that you'd need either a Mobile Me account or a website to store the images (so that they can be accessed). Whereas with the other scheme, I think the images become embedded in the stationery.