Using AppleScript to set a mail message to Plain Text

Question

I have an AppleScript that nicely collates information and creates an email message with attachments.

I cannot find a way for the script to set the message format to

Answer 1

I found this question while trying to solve exactly this problem. Eventually I came up with the following solution:

tell application "Mail"
    set newMessage to make new outgoing message 
        with properties {visible:true,
                         subject:"message title",
                         sender:"sender@from.address",
                         content:mailBody}
    tell newMessage
        make new to recipient with properties {address:"mail@recipient.com"}
    end tell
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    click menu item "Make Plain Text" of ((process "Mail")'s (menu bar 1)'s (menu bar item "Format")'s (menu 1))
end tell

Hopefully someone will find this useful, I know I would have several hours ago!

This is tested on Mail versions 7.3 and 12.4. Newer, or older, versions might need different menu titles.