Random Characters Outlook Express
I am working on a computer that uses Outlook Express. When she receives some emails, they have random text spread throughout. It 'appears' that this occurs when an excel spreadsheet is attached to the incoming email. Oddly...when I was looking through her received email...I noted that that same email was received on two different email addresses (same domain) in Outlook Express...one had squares and random text and the other looked fine. Really kind of weird. They came from the same sender at the same time, sent to two email addresses on same domain, received at the same time...yet gibberish in one and the other was OK. Thanks in advance!1 person needs an answerI do too
March 14th, 2010 4:45am

I don't use any Office program including Word, but I do know that when a message is composed in Word and pasted into an e-mail, Outlook Express may see what you are explaining. My recollection is a little vague, but IIRC, if you go to View | Encoding and change it to Unicode UTF-8 or -7, the message will show up normally. That said, Western European is normally the preferred font to show the majority of message correctly.My best guess is that the e-mail that looked OK, was created normally, and the one with gibberish was copied and pasted. Bruce Hagen MS-MVP [Mail]
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March 14th, 2010 5:21am

Thank you for your response. That makes sense to me but this email looks like it was forwarded from someone else...The text even within the original message header is random gibberish....including email addresses. I noted that the email was decoded using Unicode (UTF-8). The default encoder in Outlook Express is Western European (ISO). I have linked to a screen shot and what it looks like (personal info redacted): http://www{dot}wheatlandcomputerservices.com/jason/dingemail{dot}jpg They are running NOD32 virus protection and am wondering if this could be a factor. Thanks again!
March 14th, 2010 5:38am

You're welcome. I'll be interested in the outcome and watch for it. Bruce Hagen MS-MVP [Mail]
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March 14th, 2010 6:01am

I don't think it has anything to do with NOD32, but it appears to have been created with a program that OE cannot understand. That is clearly more gibberish than I was thinking it would be, and only expected to see it in the message body.Since it contains XLS files, it was probably created with Outlook. (The attachments were for sure [Excel]). I know that OE can't understand Outlook's Rich Text Formatting, but again, that should not have an effect on anything but the message body or attachments.Perhaps someone in an Outlook forum would have better knowledge of this phenomenon.Microsoft Office Outlook Forumshttp://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/officeoutlook Bruce Hagen MS-MVP [Mail]
March 14th, 2010 6:11am

Thanks! I linked to this thread from the Outlook forum that you linked to. Appreciate your assistance...kind of a weird deal. http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/outlooksend/thread/79431f14-5e5f-471b-9399-e15c182c2ffa
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March 14th, 2010 6:57am

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