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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
Using Classic Outlook on Windows for personal email, calendar, and contact management
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Stephen - please check out the response from El Burgo to C3SD dated May 16^th^ . His solution and detailed instruction to solve this nuisance helped me and others which had exactly the same problem happening. Follow his instruction and I’m certain it will help you as well.
Outlook sends this --
뾐덇ŧ
and not my message (no matter how long) when I reply to messages that have embedded images in the original message I'm responding to--such as an ad.
Also a thank you C3SD for participating in this discussion regarding solving this annoying problem with the McAfee add-in and appearing Chinese characters in the reply/forwarding mails. It is great to know that there are people out there which take the time and make an effort to help out less knowledgeable users like myself.
Also to you I wish you a great weekend and best regards !
Thank you very much El Burgo for your professional instructions, patience and advise ! This is very much appreciated and I'm grateful for your help since this was truly an annoying problem.
So far your suggested remedy works and I haven't had the problem occurring since in my first 4 mails that I replied to or forwarded.
Thank you again El Burgo and I wish you a great weekend with best regards from Switzerland.
Thank you El Burgo. I appreciate you taking the time to type the instructions. I tested your instructions and they worked for me.
I had previously turned off McAfee's Anti-Spam feature. And that solved my problem. Today, I went back into McAfee and turned on Anti-Spam. I tested my email and found that the footer banners reappeared ("scanned by McAfee"). Then, I followed your instructions and disabled the McAfee Add-in in Outlook. Tested again, and the footer banners are gone.
Do you know: Is turning off Anti-Spam the same thing as disabling the Add-in? I'm not tech savvy enough to know if disabling the Add-in severed all connection between McAfee and Outlook. Or did disabling that Add-in solely remove the footer banners?
Frankly, the answer isn't that important to me. Either way I slice it, the footer banners went away and I haven't had any Chinese characters appearing. But, in the back of my mind, I wonder: Am I better off with Anti-Spam turned on and the Add-in disabled (using the instructions as you provided)? Or is your method effectively the same thing as turning off Anti-Spam?