How to Create Apple Mail Stationery

Make your own stationery with Apple's Mail application on your Mac.

When you compose email messages to people using the free Mail application on your Mac, plain text can sometimes be insufficient to convey your message. For example, you'd like to use colorful pictures and big headlines to announce a birthday party for your kid. You might always want to display a corporate logo and contact information when you send out email on behalf of your company. Mail has a variety of stationery templates that you can customize by using your own images and changing pre-formatted text.

Instructions

1. Click on the "Mail" icon in the Dock on your Mac to launch the email application.

2. Click "New Message" at the top of the Mail application window.

3. Click "Show Stationery" at the top of the email message window. Thumbnail images of various pre-formatted stationery styles appear, such as "Birthday" and "Announcements."

4. Click on a stationery template to use in the email message. Click on pre-formatted text, and type your own message, such as "Happy Birthday, Steve!"

5. Click "Photo Browser" at the top of the email message window if you want to browse photos in your iPhoto picture library, and then drag a photo from the browser onto the stationery's photo placeholder.

6. Double-click on a photo after adding it to the stationery template if it you want to change its size. Slider controls appear. Click the slider bar and drag to the right to increase the photo's size, or drag it to the left to decrease the photo's size. Click anywhere on the photo, and the cursor becomes a hand. Drag the photo around in its frame if you want to reposition it.

7. Click "File" from the Mail menu, and then click "Save as Stationery." Your customized stationery is saved in the "Custom" category that appears whenever you click "Show Stationery" in an email message.

References

• Apple: Mac 101: Mail
• Apple: Mail 4.0 Help: Using Stationery in Messages