Why will Text Edit and other apps prevent me from choosing text colors

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I have had a Genius take a look at my MacBook, no one has offered ANY support that works. Forgive me if I'm learning how to describe the issue, but here is my problem with TextEdit, Apple Mail and other apps on my Mac that came from Apple:

Anywhere I enter text to change the color the normal process is to highlight that text go to format, font, choose color…

But the color Box (that has all the little squares filled with choices of colors… is completely empty.

Here is what I expect things to look like from Mail on Mountain Lion

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My problem is on Snow Leopard (10.6.8) I don't get the same control for changing color of my text.

Can anyone help me? This is making me Crazy. :/

Best Answer

Do you save your files as .txt (i.e., plain text)? In this case you cannot change colors, because .txt cannot store them, only information that a .txt file can hold are ASCII/UTF-8 characters, no particular formatting.

But you can choose colors if you convert your text into "Rich text" (.rtf file). To do so, click on Format in the Menubar of TextEdit, and select Make Rich Text. Alternatively, you could also press the shortcut shift+command+T in TextEdit.

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