Quoting replies in Mail
September 21, 2005 at 10:21 AM by Dr. Drang
I’ve just learned how to fix something that’s bothered me about the OS X Mail application. When you are replying to a message, Mail’s default action is to put the quoted original message at the bottom of your reply (below your signature). While I’m sure there are plenty of people who like this, I’m not one of them. I like to remind my correspondent of what he said, and if there are several points in the original message that need responses, I like to interleave my reply with the original.
There is no radio button or checkbox in Mail’s preferences that lets me change this default behavior, but after little searching in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist, I found a setting called “SignaturePlacedAboveQuotedText.” Changing this from Yes to No (with Mail not running) put the quote where I want it. Sadly, the blinking cursor is still placed above the quote when the editing window comes up, but at least I don’t have to do as much cutting and pasting.
Update: While setting up a new account in Mail, I found the Preferences checkbox that does this: it’s at the bottom of the Signatures pane. Now I’m wondering if I clicked that by mistake many months ago.
