Outlook 2016 - chinese characters appearing in messages when replying/forwarding

Anonymous
2017-04-24T13:29:42+00:00

Hello,

I am investigating an issue with Outlook 2016 and seemingly random appearances of chinese characters in email messages when replying or forwarding. I have a Exchange 365 hybrid environment and O365 pro plus office installed on workstations.

I have not been able to pinpoint a common factor why or when this happens. It is possible to reproduce the issue by sending a plain text message to a O365 group and then reply/forward the same message > header information is transformed into "chinese" (I have no idea what they actually are) characters. This does not happen with all groups or senders which is why I am looking into Outlook at the moment.

I`ve tried to change Outlook settings: use UTF8 with mailto protocol, change the encoding settings to different options etc. without success. 

I`d like to hear how would you start to troubleshoot this issue?

BR,

Sam

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-08-08T19:05:03+00:00

    I recently discovered this issue now occurs with Notes.

    If I create a note with html links on my phone and sync it to the desktop (wait for it to sync Over the air), the note is lost on the pc to the Chinese language, when I check my phone, Only the note title is Chinese, the contents look fine. The first line of the note (which becomes the title) is 'Houses'.

    If I copy all the next out of the note and paste it into a message, I can read the message just fine in outlook.

    If I then copy the contents of the message into a note called Houses v2 created on the PC, it sync's to the phone without issue,.  If I change it on the phone, when it syncs back to the PC, out pops up an error, "Sorry we are having trouble opening this message..." The message is still fine on the phone.

    I'm on outlook 2016 on windows 10, the av is bitdefender. When I turn off bitdefender, I have the same issue. The conversion to Chinese language seems to be the way outlook handles html links.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-07-14T10:12:51+00:00

    But in my case where the characters are hidden in an email - apparent when you cut and paste an email into a Word file - I have no satisfactory answer - I don't have McFee on my computer

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-07-12T12:17:16+00:00

    Hi Greg,

    We fixed it (at least for now...) by rebuilding all the new systems using the latest Windows 10 Pro ISO downloaded directly from MS as a base and then putting Office 365 on top.

    At present, it has not occurred again in over two weeks. Even when testing a repeatable trigger.

    I kept one system with the factory image and that if used as the base will develop the issue within a few days of use.

    I still don't think we are truly to the bottom of what is causing this, however, this has allowed us for the moment to restart our rollout which has appeased management.

    Kind regards.

    Hello, 

    Did you ever find out what the issue was? We are a Dell house and have several users are seeing the chinese symbol in outlook intermittently.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-07-12T12:02:59+00:00

    The issue was associated with a McAfee plugin option that added a notification at the bottom of emails.  to fix this, I disabled that option via McAfee's settings

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-07-12T09:54:37+00:00

    Hello, 

    Did you ever find out what the issue was? We are a Dell house and have several users are seeing the chinese symbol in outlook intermittently.

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