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
    2018-03-16T15:47:15+00:00

    BTW, this is not random. I can replicate this issue using a native iOS client, a volume license copy of Office Pro plus, and an Office 365 group. I only see this when someone used Outlook 2016 from Office Pro Plus to reply to a group conversation which originated from the native iOS client. I'm sure it's HTML multibyte markup relating text that comprises the From/To/Subject section. I have been able to replicate this for over a year and even attempted to escalate this with MS via our CSP provider. Willing to work with anyone to solve.

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-03-17T11:51:12+00:00

    Hi Rob, 

    Since the thread is too old. If you need further assistance, please create a new thread in our forum. Our related engineers will help you with the issue. Thanks for your understanding.

    Regards,

    Carlos

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-04-02T03:12:18+00:00

    It looks like some kind of encoding glitch.  Is there any common feature about the emails where this happens?

    ShowBox Lucky Patcher Kodi

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-04-02T04:29:11+00:00

    I thought it had stopped then suddenly I received one from Acme markets last week.  I thought I had kept it in case I heard from this group again but now I can't find it.  There doesn't seem to be any common reason.  Sometimes, it's one that I send, sometimes one that I receive.  it comes & goes haphazardly. it's not just Chinese characters, sometimes they appear to be Greek characters, some are computer language-type characters.  One had a bright red, shiny apple in the middle of the message.  I'm not a computer expert by any stretch of the imagination, but there appears to be no rhyme or reason to any of it & there is no way of knowing when it will pop up.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-06-26T05:24:36+00:00

    I have started experiencing a similar issue after I upgraded our Exchange Server 2013 to the latest Roll Up (22 I think)

    Emails come through to our Outlook 2010 client, they look fine. You might reply, and that is fine. Then you might come back on to the email later on, and the entire body has turned into Chinese characters, and other weird characters. I asked someone who can read Chinese and they said it was just gibberish, so it is not a translation of the original email from English to Chinese.

    I thought this was an issue with Outlook 2010, so I have upgraded everyone to Outlook 2016 which seems to have improved the problem. But there is one particular person who is still facing the issue. It doesn't seem to affect emails coming in from outside the business, only internal emails.

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