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
    2019-01-16T11:00:18+00:00

    I have the same problem, with one account only. I have now stopped using the Outlook app on my iPhone and I am now using the normal Mail app instead.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-01-18T10:38:43+00:00

    Same situation :/ 

    It is a disaster :/

    If Microsoft keep ignoring this I advise to switching to Google Suite :D I use this solution in my previous organization and I must say Google support there resolves that kind of accidents in a few days.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-01-18T10:55:09+00:00

    I mailed from an iPhone with Outlook app. Looks good on my side. But the recievers side with an iPhone using Apples mail app the mail that I sent is with chinese letters.

    It is not Microsoft's fault. Its the lack of responds that is wrong.

    How about look inte the way the oulook app sends the messages? coding, html, plain text etc. 

    Why don't apple support it??

    Microsoft should have known it from the start. creating an app to the most used phones in the world. But you cant send messages to the people that dont use there app. come ON!!??

    BR, Daniel

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-02-11T18:44:39+00:00

    We are having the same problem with the Chinese characters, we were able to replicate it (no solution yet)

    One of our users has a Spanish last name with an accent (i.e.: Pérez). When this user opens an email in an iPhone using an app other than Outlook, the Chinese characters are there.

    When the same user opens the same email in the same iPhone using Outlook, the Chinese characters are gone.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-03-04T10:39:16+00:00

    For us the issue appears when an Outlook email signature is set up.  For us the body of the text is replaced by just 2 or 3 Chinese(?)  characters.   

    It's an occasional issue, but the following two things are always present:

    It's always a "Reply" - NOT a New Email

    There is a signature

    The following do not seem to alter it:

    Smart quotes enabled or not 

    HTML or Rich text format 

    Encoding is set to Unicode UTF-8

    We only ever use Spanish as an additional language and it doesn't seem to matter whether that is loaded or not

    It doesn't seem to matter if the original inbound email has, or has not, any accented characters - and/or was written in English or Spanish (as would be expected using UTF-8)

    Microsoft Outlook for Office 365 MSO Version 1901 (Build 16.0.11231.20174 64 Bit

    Hope this helps..

    Burgo

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