Re: Strange Characters When Viewing Outlook Express messages

Really! June 2006, whattya know....

Well, thanks, I think this has gone as far as we can go.

--
Pete B


"PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O2RHpiWMJHA.5232@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Encoding (not fonts) controls everything in an email message.

When reading the message in OE, the message's format (i.e., Plain Text;
RichText; HTML) plays a role, too...as does proprietary formatting (e.g.,
AOL).

Basically, OE simply does not play nicely with all encoding and
formatting...and it was never designed to do so. But this is all water
under the bridge now: All development on OE (and Windows Mail in Vista,
for that matter) stopped in June 2006...yes, while Vista was still in
beta.


Pete B wrote:
I did just what you suggest before I saw your post, and I found that, in
the
case of this particular message, I could get it to appear normal (rid of
garbled characters) by changing the OEx Read font options to US-Ascii,
and
with the message open, using the OEx View/Encoding setting of Unicode
UTF-8.
With that adjustment, the message looked OK although the font was Arial
when
displayed rather than my setting Arial Black.

Didn't seem to affect the other messages when I viewed them, but I went
back
to Western Euro default/US Ascii as my encoding settings.

I seem to have about a gazillion fonts on my HDD in Ctl Panel, and I
browsed
but do not understand the CP Regional and Language options settings. Is
there any MSKB info or other about these settings? Help file doesn't
:=).
Does the encoding affect the message when you download it, or only when
you
view it?

BTW thanks for your attention to this. At least I have a bit better
handle
on this.


"PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uTe$FaVMJHA.1304@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My only other suggestion would be to invistigate your setting(s) in View
|
Encoding when reading such a message => with "Read all messages in plain
text" <= option DISABLED.

Pete B wrote:
Strange. I opened the particular message from MS Tech which I quoted
in
my
original post, and looked at the message source text, where the same
garbled
apostrophe characters are showing in the plain text of the source.
Also
if
I copy and paste the message text into Notepad, it shows the same
corruption.

Maybe it is like you say, just a sender anomaly, but if so, it is not
going
to be cured by receiving massages as plain text. I am surprised it
would
happen to something like MS Technotes, though; that means MS must have
changed something with whatever they use to produce the emails.



"Pete B" <petescastle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23pn1xfTMJHA.1304@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
That is just not true. For just one thing, if it were true, then all
the
technotes I received from MS in the past going back years would have
exhibited this corruption, but they do not, even when I open and view
them
now. If it were as you say, this would have been happening for the
last
seven or eight years since I installed WinXP in all my emails.

As I stated, this is a recent phenomenon and *it is not unique to any
one
sender*, it only started (as near as I can recall) in the time since I
installed WinXP SP3, or perhaps since one of many auto MS security
service
updates or earlier WinXP or IE or OEx updates, which were done quite
often, that took place around that time. This is something specific
to
Outlook Express or IE, since I do not encounter it in any other
software
I
am running, MS or non-MS such as word-processors and otherwise.

I have quite an archive of past emails, going back years and stored
right
on this PC, none of which exhibit this strange corruption until
recently,
so it is either a sender-caused effect due to some new type of email
client behavior that affects all email clients including Firefox and
Mozilla and others because I have seen it in emails from those clients
as
well as MS clients, or something caused by my ISP email server
software
somehow (which I admit would not surprise me), or else it is something
that was caused by some change in Windows OEx or IE on my system
(which
is
my mosty likely suspect).

I also highly suspect it is something on my system, because in the
forums
where I have experienced this happening when I receive postings by
email,
I have asked other members if they observe the same behavior when they
view forum messages, and nobody else has experienced it to anywhere
near
the degree I have encountered. So I really doubt it is something
other
than my PC itself.

I am going to try running without any IE addins and see if that does
anything, since it will eliminate all the XML and other addins of
recent
times. Maybe that has something to do with it.

--
Pete B

"PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u48UlwKMJHA.3504@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
What you're seeing is caused by the Sender's formatting, period.
There's
nothing you can do about it except ask your correspondents to always
send
emails to you using Plain Text (not RichText; not HTML) formatting.

If they don't, their messages could be in Chinese as far as OE's
concerned.

Pete B wrote:
Well, commented upon, not really answered. No solutions presented
to
eliminate the problem, only explanations of probable causes. I
would
still
like to definitively and specifdically know why this started
happening
and
how to eliminate it from occurring, because it seldom if ever
happened
until
just recently. I appreciated all the answers I did get, but mostly
they
could be summed up as "Live with it".


"PA Bear [MS MVP]" <PABearMVP@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%234$XGq$LJHA.2164@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Asked/Answered in OE6 newsgroup]

Pete B wrote:
Running WinXP Pro SP3. When I open or view most OEx6 messages, I
get
some
rather strange font characters in my email messages I receive.
For
example,
I receive the MS Technet posts and here is a line of text from the
latest:

"First up, weâ?Tll bring you up to speed on several of the new
offerings
around Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows Client. Youâ?Tll be
hearing
more about Windows 7 later this month, especially if youâ?Tre
attending
..."


Does anyone know how to get rid of those odd "â?T" text
characters?
I
tried
changing to different encoding settings for the fonts I use (Arial
Black
and
Lucinda Console, Windows Euro encoding), it made some slight
differences
but
I still had strange characters here and there. It appears they
might
be
related to punctuation marks or something. I have not added or
changed
any
fonts from what I have always had, so what is going on?

BTW I am not sure but this seemed to start after I installed SP3
for
WinXP.



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Default Arial font always appears as Times New Roman on all re
    ... say C:\desktop\march07 and import all settings ... The sent item box does show emails as arial 10 point. ... OLEXP: The Font Size Changes When You Press ENTER in a New Message: ... in my OE settings 'Read Fonts' are @ Western European Windows ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6_outlookexpress)
  • Re: Strange Characters When Viewing Outlook Express messages
    ... isn't enabled by default, Pete, and I would not recommend enabling it. ... All development on OE (and Windows Mail in Vista, ... but do not understand the CP Regional and Language options settings. ... changed something with whatever they use to produce the emails. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Strange Characters When Viewing Outlook Express messages
    ... Is "Use default encoding for all incoming messages" enabled? ... IIRC it isn't enabled by default, Pete, and I would not recommend enabling it. ... but do not understand the CP Regional and Language options settings. ... changed something with whatever they use to produce the emails. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Strange Characters When Viewing Outlook Express messages
    ... www.insideoe.com is considered the OE Bible in my circle, Pete. ... All development on OE (and Windows Mail in Vista, ... but do not understand the CP Regional and Language options settings. ... changed something with whatever they use to produce the emails. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Strange Characters When Viewing Outlook Express messages
    ... the message looked OK although the font was Arial when ... but do not understand the CP Regional and Language options settings. ... changed something with whatever they use to produce the emails. ... around Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows Client. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
Loading