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Emails containing strange characters using 7.07
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I have a user that was using POP3 with Outlook 2019, but of course, did not have access to shared calendars and folders etc.
I disabled her POP3 account in Outlook and added and MC account and instructed her to use it going forward.
The prblem is that almost every email she writes has gobblygook inserted in the email. Here is an example line:
Doesn\t look like it worked \u9785 ? If you want to wait until next week to take another stab at it, that\s fine
Does anybody know the solution?
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Tyler Staff
@John This sounds like an encoding issue.
What format is the email being composed in? Plain Text, HTML, or Rich Text?
Is the user sending a plain text email when this occurs? Meaning, does the message have a HTML signature or contain embedded images?
Is the issue only occurring with message replies, new messages, forwards, or multiple/all types of messages?
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I'm 90% sure they are HTML format.
I am not sure if it matters if they are replies or new ones, will have to ask her.
I did see other discussions about this and MD Connector was mentioned.
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Tyler Staff
@John The issue in the Microsoft link is over 8 years old, referring to an out of support version of Outlook and the MDaemon (Outlook) Connector.
If we find out how to reproduce the issue, we can get a better idea of what's happening. For example, if the issue happens with every new message the user sends and the user has a signature with images or text, we'd want to verify if the same issue occurs if you leave the signature out of the new message.
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For sure, it's the apostrophy at least that is getting replaced by \
Below was her answer to me.
Hi John,
I believe I have always used HTML prior and now. I\m not sure how to tell how other people are sending to me It only happens on replies, not new messages. AND, NEW UPDATE I looks like it\s only happening when there is an emoji typed into the email. WEIRD! So far, I\ve only been typing in the smiley face emoji.
Below is how the "sent items" version looks when viewed in WorldClient.
Hi John,
I believe I have always used HTML prior and now. I’m not sure how to tell how other people are sending to me… It only happens on replies, not new messages. AND, NEW UPDATE… I looks like it’s only happening when there is an emoji typed into the email. WEIRD! So far, I’ve only been typing in the smiley face emoji.
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Tyler Staff
@John In Outlook, select the File ribbon, select Options, and select Mail. Here you can verify which format is being used to compose messages.
Select the File ribbon again, select Options, select Advanced, and scroll down to 'International Options.' What character set is the preferred encoding for outgoing messages set to?
Based on the message you receveied with the broken encoding, this means that an emoji was in the email response? Is there a signature in the email that's been added and/or are there any attachments in the email you received?
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I know this is a year ago and it may have been solved in an update, but I've not seen a solution to it online, so here is the solution that helped resolve it on our end.
1. Go to the person's computer and open Outlook.
2. Go into Options
3. Go to "Mail"
4. Go to "Editor Options"
5. Go to "AutoCorrect Options..."
6. In the "Autoformatting as you type tab" Check off the "Straight quotes". Test it. If it doesn't work, go to the "Autoformat" tab and check off the straight quotes option there too.
Here's a picture of the options
I speculate the cause of this is a feature that is available in a lot of Microsoft office Apps and how apostrophes and single/straight quotes are used interchangably in a lot of interfaces. When a single quote is typed in within a composing message in Outlook, Outlook will try to convert this single quote/aprostrophe into a directional single-quote. Somewhere along the pipeline before the email heads out, the transcription service couldn't handle the directional single-quote character.
For an example of what they both look like, this is a simple straight quote, it's ascii code is 39:
'
And the below is a directional opening-quote that outlook replaces straight quotes or "apostrophes" when the user types it in:
‘
The character above was what is causing the &bsol to show up for our users. It's 1 pixel standing 1 space to the right. So much fear and doubt over so small a thing.
You can confirm this yourself on the problematic Outlook application. Copy and pasting doesn't seem to trigger Outlook's autocorrect of straight-quotes into directional quotes. So if you manually type in a single quote into a composing message in Outlook, and then paste a single quote from notepad into the same message you should be able to see the difference. If you send it, you'll see only one of them transforms into &bsol when the message is set to HTML. I'm not sure why this only happens to some computers, as it does not replicate reliably on others.
Why &bsol? I speculate this may have to do with some system trying to interpret Outlook's directional single quotes with some sort of escape character(\), but it gets stuck with the backslash for it, then fails silently. The backslash in ascii code is 92, the backslash in HTML code is &bsol (no semicolon though).
I have tried to puzzle out what \u9785 is in the original post, but without the original to compare I came up with nothing.
I don't have any concrete information about why this is localized to the users in one of our departments, but I think it may have something to do with copy and pasting text from a really old word file type into the draft of an Outlook email. The inclusion of an emoji probably triggers something similar.
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I do think this is still a problem for just one user. Of course, she's the one that is off-site and so I have to do everything remote.
At some point, I did look at this as a solution, but then she updated to Windows 11 and the problem went away.
Recently, she got a new computer and the problem came back.
I'll look at that solution again.
