Format a reply: bold, colours and sizes

A reply to a customer can carry bold, italics, strikethrough, three text sizes and eight colours. Use them to pull out the one step the customer has to take, a price, or the heading of each option, so a long answer is quick to scan.

1. 1
   Select the words

   Select the words in the reply box. With nothing selected, the word the cursor is in is used.
2. 2
   Pick the format

   Press Bold, Italic or Strikethrough at the top of the reply box, or choose a size or a colour from the two menus beside them. Press the same button again to take bold, italics or strikethrough off; choose Normal or No colour to take a size or a colour off.
3. 3
   Check the preview

   Under the box, How the email will look shows the reply exactly as the customer receives it. Press Send when it looks right.

• ⌘B (Ctrl+B on Windows) for bold.
• ⌘I (Ctrl+I) for italics.
• ⌘⇧X (Ctrl+Shift+X) for strikethrough.
• ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z) takes the last formatting step back, like any other change.

The formatting is written into the reply as short marks, so you can also type them yourself: bold, _italics_ and ~~strikethrough~~, each touching the word it formats. A single asterisk is never formatting, so wildcards, file paths and commands such as del *.tmp are sent exactly as you type them. A size or a colour reads {size:large}like this{/size} or {color:purple}like this{/color}. Text pasted from Word, Outlook or a web page keeps its bold, italics, strikethrough, headings, sizes and colours, matched to the nearest of the eight colours, and its bullet and numbered lists come in as lines starting with - or 1.

A quick reply has the same toolbar and preview, so a reply you send often, such as a list of options with each name in bold, is formatted once and goes into the reply box ready to send.

Formatting goes to the customer when the reply is sent as an email from Current. A reply that goes to Teams, through your PSA, or onto a ticket with no email address is sent as plain words, and the reply box says so before you send. The ticket's own copy, your PSA and search keep the words without the marks. Internal notes stay plain text.