OL 2003 Encoding Problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom
  • Start date Start date
T

Tom

Since upgrading to Outlook 2003, I've had problems with encoding (I'm
assuming).

A lot of messages *TO* me display with strange characters in place of
punctuation (quotation marks, parens, apostrophes, etc.).

I can duplicate this by sending myself a message from a web-based Yahoo!
account. I sent a message from Yahoo!'s web interface to a friend running
OL 2000, and copied myself.

It naturally looked fine in Yahoo's web display, and my friend with OL
2000 said it looked fine.

Here's an excerpt of what I saw on my end (in OL 2003):

---

18 rack mount plus padding) gives it a dimensional weight of 26 pounds
(whatever that means 

---

The '' appears in place of ' " ' and the '' in place of an opening
quote, and the '' in place of a closing paren, etc., etc., etc.

Note that this is an INBOUND encoding issue - I'm having difficulty
reading messages sent to me by others.
 
Normally this character you mentions mean there is no character in the location for that font you are using. If you go to a font, Start | Run | charmap | OK and then do the drop-down to MS Outlook you will see many of these box characters. They are an indication that area has been left with a place for a user defined character. Since you probably aren't doing that its location just happens to be undefined when you get characters in your email with codes to that area.

Have you tried changing the fonts that you use to read your e-mail? or changed fonts similarly in Outlook Express or Microsoft Internet Explorer? If so you might want to look at what the default fonts are in a machine that doesn't have the issue. fonts for reading.

In Outlook 2003 I have Tools | Options... | Mail Format | Stationary and fonts | Fonts... | Message Fonts. Here is where you might check. I have:

10 pt Arial
10 pt Arial in blue
10 pt Courier New

The Automatically display... is checked. And under International fonts I have: Encoding Western Eouropean and the default encoding is Western European. It is also dimmed there so I cannot change it. HTH.
 
Normally this character you mentions mean there is no character in the
location for that font you are using. If you go to a font, Start |
Run | charmap | OK and then do the drop-down to MS Outlook you will
see many of these box characters. They are an indication that area
has been left with a place for a user defined character. Since you
probably aren't doing that its location just happens to be undefined
when you get characters in your email with codes to that area.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the great reply, George. I checked everything specified, and
it matches what you specified!?

In my experiments, this gets even more strange.......

Using OL 2003 (using Word as the editor), I write an e-mail to my own
Yahoo! webmail account. There, it arrives and looks perfect.

I reply from Yahoo! webmail, leaving the original message text.

It arrives in the account handled by OL 2003, where the Yahoo! webmail
portion (the reply) looks fine, but the original text (originated by OL
2003) at the bottom now has the random characters in place of
punctuation!

It looks fine in the outbox, looks fine in Yahoo! webmail, the reply
looks fine in Yahoo's outbox, but it's hosed when it comes back to
Outlook - And only that portion originally written in Outlook!? (No, I'm
not making this up <smile>).

What should my encoding be in "International option" under Mail Format? I
get the same results regardless of whether I choose Western European
(ISO) or Western European (Windows). By the way, I'm in the US, and 99.9%
of my correspondence is domestic.

Thanks in advance!
 
Well let me tell you something. I had an issue that I was investigating fonts for send and received mail in Outlook Express. I am pretty sure I didn't change anything was just looking. Anyway after I did that all the newsgroups I visit starting looking just weird. Like weird the font wasn't right the encoding wasn't right it was just weird. And I'm telling you there was no change in anything different from a system that did not have "weird" looking messages.

This was actually the second time this happened to me. It had happened before not in the operating system I am referring to now.

I did not have the box affliction but the messages were "weird" nevertheless.

I did fix it. I think what I did was look in the registry for font type and stuff like that and maybe reinstalled Outlook Express.

But your issue is in Outlook. Since I stay away from even "looking" at fonts in the defaults that are installed I believe you may have "looked" at one one time or other in Outlook, Outlook Express., or Internet Explorer at the default fonts and now you got boxes.

But how do we fix this? The fact that you are getting boxes tells me you are using a font that has many user defined areas for other characters that aren't being used. So you get boxes. In this case I would bet that what looks like a normal font in the Fonts folder off the Control Panel may not in fact be what it should be.

Let's investigate this. The fonts that Outllook is telling you are the defaults for reading I believe Arial and New Courier let us go to charmap. Then find those fonts in the drop down. Tell me do you see any boxes in them? I'll be honest with you. When I first responded to you the only fonts in charmap that had the boxes FOR SURE so that I could refer you to it to see the boxes was MS Outlook. My Arial doesn't have them MS Sans Serif don't have them, Tahoma neither nor does MingLiU. These are your REALLY important fonts. When these get corrupted it can turn you computer into a bad case of a poor scrabble player.

If you are using Windows 2000 or XP not sure I would run sfc. Go to Start | Run | cmd | sfc /scannow /purgecache <ENTER> with your installation CD in the drive. Then reboot. Try that.
 
If you are using Windows 2000 or XP not sure I would run sfc. Go to
Start | Run | cmd | sfc /scannow /purgecache <ENTER> with your
installation CD in the drive. Then reboot. Try that.
Click to expand...

Tried all that you suggested, George - To no avail!?

I did a little more "experimenting," and this got "more odd' by the
moment. Check this out...

I send a test message from account1 (OL 2003/SMTP) to account2
(Yahoo!/webmail) where it looks perfect. I reply, and the account2 sent
items copy looks perfect.

When it arrives back at account1, the reply (written with webmail) is
fine, but the original message at the bottom is messed-up.

Now here's where it *REALLY* gets strange...

1) I don't think it can be the font because both the account1 original
and the account2 reply use Arial - The same size and attributes (none),
etc.

2) I can forward that final message (original plus reply) to anyone (I
tried people w/various versions of OL and OE, as well as both Yahoo! and
Hotmail webmail), and *EVERYONE* sees the "corruption" that occured in
the original text, but the reply from account2 is fine.

3) So I know it's some kind of "translation" mishap somewhere, which
appears to be on my OL "receiving end," but only on portions of text I
originated.

4) I've eliminated (I think) blaming Yahoo! because I can consistantly
produce the same results if account2 is the web interface to an Earthlink
account, too!!??

5) The only "commonality" (that I've been able to identify) is that the
original OL text has to "pass through" a web-based e-mail editor, and be
returned to me (as insane as that sounds).

6) I have absolutely no problems corresponding with others using e-mail
clients (OL, OE, Eudora, etc.).... It's only when my original text
"passes-through" someone's web front-end for reply that my original
(only) is viewed as corrupted when I receive the reply (but not on what
that web front-end shows in its sent mail folder!?)

Lest you think I'm smoking something, or "doing mushrooms," <smile>, I
assure you I'm not (although this does sound *THAT* crazy, doesn't it?).

-Tom
 
I should add that I'm running XP/Pro and OL 2003 without Exchange.

It's a locally stored PST in the new (unicode) format operating through two
different e-mail accounts (both POP/SMTP from different vendors), and the
same problems happen regardless of which I use.

I do not have this problem using the same accounts and test messages
sent/received through Outlook Express.

This problem surfaced (I do a LOT of emailing daily) only after upgrading
to OL 2003 (from OL XP) with the unicode PST.

I'm using Word (2003) as my editor in OL, but the problem occurs
consistantly even when I disable that, and use the native OL editor.
 
Give me a day. I have to peruse what you said a little more and try to figure out the nuances of what you say. Then see if I can find anything on it in the knowledge base. The fact that you are getting the boxes that's the pertinent issue here. Why? Well because if the font you are using doesn't understand the encoding you should get ? marks not boxes.

You checked in charmap the fonts I asked you about and there are no boxes in those?
 
I haven't forgot about you and I think Diane is probably going down the right road here. I would think the Content-Type instead of us-ascii should say something like:

charset=windows-1252

or

charset=ISO-8859-1

So maybe the Webmail coming at you does not have this set for the included Outlook reply????

Also make sure your regional settings are right for US English.
 
look in the message header - what charset is used in the message?

it'll look something like this:

Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Click to expand...

I don't have any of the above in the headers, Diane. What OL 2003 sends
(as viewed through "view headers" in Yahoo! webmail) is:

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0010_
1C3CA0B.D6D1CAB0"

....and that looks fine in webmail. When I reply (webmail back to the OL
2003 account), that message from Yahoo! also has...

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-757077573-1072291966
=:8353"

....as viewed in OL 2003 message options.

At this point, the original, returned via webmail! is corrupted, but the
reply text added to the message by webmail is not.

Both charset and Content-Transfer-Encoding are noticeably lacking at both
ends.

And once the original and reply are both received back at OL 2003,
everyone I forward the message to sees the same thing (corruption in the
original, but not the reply).

And again, this only occurs after everything has been received back into
OL 2003 (it all looks fine in Yahoo! webmail).

And, by the way... Both ends use the same font (Arial 11pt), but this
seems to happen regardless of the font used.

If it makes any difference, I'm using Word (2003) as the editor in
Outlook (althoguh I've tried it both ways, and that makes no difference),
and all of the messages are HTML.

Here's what I see when the whole thing comes back to OL This is an actual
cut & paste, and the whole thing is Arial 11pt, black...


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This is a reply from webmail using "quotes" and (parens). The original
message from Outlook 2003 (below) looks perfect here in Yahoo! webmail.

This is the original test message from the Outlook ¬POP/SMTP account)
with quotes and ¬parens).
 
I haven't forgot about you and I think Diane is probably going down
the right road here. I would think the Content-Type instead of
us-ascii should say something like:

charset=windows-1252

or

charset=ISO-8859-1

So maybe the Webmail coming at you does not have this set for the
included Outlook reply????

Also make sure your regional settings are right for US English.
Click to expand...
The regional settings (in XP's control panel) are set for US Engish, and
there is no charset specified in the header!? When I expand and view all
headers (either in Yahoo! webmail's viewer, or in OL on the returned
message), the only thing (besides the routing, etc.) is Content-Type:
multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0010_
01C3CA0B.D6D1CAB0"
 
look in the message header - what charset is used in the message?

it'll look something like this:

Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Click to expand...


Diane, there is no "charset" specified in the messages in question. Nor
is there any Content-Type: text/plain (as they're HTML).

It seems that there have been a number of posts in the newsgroups about
new (odd?) behavior concerning inbound encoding handling on OL 2003, so
I'm certainly not alone.

Is there anything that can correct this?
 
Dear Tom,

I think you have a same problem as me. That e-mail doesn't have the charset because it isn't HTML mail. I got a harder problem than you because I can't read E-Mail in my language at all. I have to switch back and use OE6, that's sad ...

I think (and I hope) that Microsoft will relese the Encoding selector patch for this very soon.

What I want in there:
- Select default encoding for all message [like what OE6 can do]
- Have a Encoding menu in the View menu

So, maybe I wasted my money with the Office 2003 again ...
 
Dear Tom,

I think you have a same problem as me. That e-mail doesn't have the
charset because it isn't HTML mail. I got a harder problem than you
because I can't read E-Mail in my language at all. I have to switch
back and use OE6, that's sad ...
Click to expand...

Well, I was beginning to feel that I was the only one with this problem,
and feel like I'm from Mars when I ask about it, but I challenged an IT
Professional friend of mine to try exactly the same experiment on a brand
new machine - Clean install of XP and Office 2003, following the steps of
my "test" exactly, and he got exactly the same results... All with the
"default" settings of the OS and Office.

So, it can't be "just" me, but it feels that way <smile>.

He's going to ask about it on the closed MSDN groups, or whatever it is
that they use, and let me know if he finds anything.'

In the mean time, I hope someone will chime-in here with some ideas.
 
I have a brand new Dell computer - 3 GH and 1 GB Ram - state of the art machine, doing the exact same thing - ALL punctuation marks show up on every web page as a question mark (?)

So I've would look like I?ve. Shouldn't we comes out Shouldn?t we, and on and on. I have XP professional and Office 2003. Does Microsoft recognize this issue at all???
 
It sounds like a font problem - the sites in question use a specific font
and your computer isn't.
 
Back
Top