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

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.

0 comments

132 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2019-06-20T12:13:20+00:00

    Just to add another voice to the growing chorus...

    Same situation as Sander above.

    We took delivery of a new batch of Dell Vostro's. These had nothing installed before deployment but Windows 10 Pro and Office 365. And we now have users of these systems getting the Chinese character issue when using Outlook. These have all been long term users of our O365 infrastructure on other systems without issue.

    One user, I built another identical system for when the first manifested the issue - within a week it was occurring again. We do not have any external AV on these machines at present to eliminate that as a factor. Still occurs.

    Given that these machines have nothing but Windows & Office installed yet still manifest the problem this must be an MS issue...

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. 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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. 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

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. 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.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. 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

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments