Outlook 2003 and other languages

[Jiahui]

Hi all,

The coordinators in my company have recently migrated to Vista from an XP
platform.

Sometimes, when they receive new mails in other languages (chinese, etc.) on
Outlook 2003, the text shows up as question marks.

It seems that the message got converted into plain text as it reaches
Outlook 2003.

We never had this problem in XP and I have searched for a long time and
still cannot come to an answer. Is there a solution to this?

 

[Pat Willener]

There are two things to this issue:
- Encoding; the sender *must* send the message in the appropriate
Chinese (or whatever) encoding. The receiving email client cannot
automatically recognize if the data in the message is Chinese, or
Japanese, or Arabic, etc. This is what the encoding specifies.
- Unicode mode: Outlook must run in Unicode mode to properly handle
multibyte characters. For details on Unicode mode see this article
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402611033.aspx

P.S. if a message has already been received without the proper encoding,
it *may* be restored by editing the message, then set the correct
encoding. However, the multibyte characters may already have broken
apart into single garbage characters; in this case it is too late.
Question marks are good, and may be repaired with the correct encoding.

 

[Jiahui]

Hello,

Let me list somemore symptoms -

We can still view old messages that were received prior to importing the PST
into Vista.

We can also send out emails in Chinese, and it displays well in our Sent
Items folder. Does this mean that the encoding was correct? However, on the
receiving end, it shows up as question marks. Changing the encoding made no
difference.

Are these problems still covered by the Unicode issue? If yes, I will give
the steps in the link a try.

Thank you for your time!

 

[Brian Tillman]

We can still view old messages that were received prior to importing
the PST into Vista.

This right here could be the source of your problem. NEVER import from a
PST. It's unnecessary and you lose data. Go back to the ORIGINAL PSt and
simply reuse it with FIle>Open>Outlook Data File.

 

[Jiahui]

Hi,

Thank you, I will give it a try and send a reply when the computers are
available.

 

[Jiahui]

Hi all,

When I create a new profile and try to send out mails with Chinese text on
that profile, there was no problem. So I think Mr. Brian's theory is
correct. However, the original PST file (the one inside XP) is already
outdated by close to two weeks. Quite a lot of mails will be lost if I
follow the method below. Is there a way to get the mails on Vista out
without also getting the problem?

Thanks.

 

[Pat Willener]

When sending a message that contains multibyte characters, you *must*
specify the correct encoding, otherwise the receiving client will not
know what to do with it. If the receiving client happens to be a Chinese
one (e.g. Chinese version of Outlook), it will guess the encoding
correctly. If it is an English language client, then it will not.

You can set the encoding for each individual outgoing message, or you
can set it for all messages in the Outlook options (International Options).

Please make sure you use the correct encoding for simplified *or*
traditional Chinese.

 

[Pat Willener]

The only option I can see at this stage is to open both PST files, then
merge (delete, drag-and-drop) the two files. It will be messy!

 

[Jiahui]

Hi all,

Thank you so much for your patience.

It is indeed under International Fonts and the problem is now solved after
having myself run in circles.

Tools > Options > Mail Format > Fonts > International Fonts > Encoding > I
changed it to UTF-8.

Thanks.

 

[Brian Tillman]

When I create a new profile and try to send out mails with Chinese
text on that profile, there was no problem. So I think Mr. Brian's
theory is correct. However, the original PST file (the one inside XP)
is already outdated by close to two weeks. Quite a lot of mails will
be lost if I follow the method below. Is there a way to get the mails
on Vista out without also getting the problem?

Open the old PST with FIle>Open>Outlook Data File and move the messages
around manually (or just leave them in the old PST and use them there).

 

[Pat Willener]

UTF-8 is fine if the recipients are on a Windows machine; it may not be
supported by non-Windows platforms. In this case you should use
- GB2312 or GB18030 for Simplified Chinese
- Big5 for Traditional Chinese

But I hope that in future we could do away with all these different
encodings, and just use Unicode UTF-8.