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
    2018-06-30T03:43:56+00:00

    I can't tell you if it's exact but looks very similar.  What is it?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-06-30T03:35:58+00:00

    Damien Brown - when you get Chinese text, is it this exact text?:

    䐼噉㰾䐯噉‾䐼噉氠湡㵧湥甭⁳汣獡㵳畏汴潯䵫獥慳敧效摡牥愠楬湧∽敬瑦•䥄㵒䰢剔㸢㰠但呎䘠捡㵥吢•楓敺㈽ⴾ䈼㹒㰠㹂㱆䈯‾⁉⁛䈼伾⼼㹂樠䈼㹒㰠㹂㱓䈯‾㱏剂‾䈼吾⼼㹂䤠䈼㹒†䈼匾⼼㹂删䈼㹒†㰠剂‾⼼但呎‾⼼䥄㹖

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-06-26T12:31:52+00:00

    Hi Damien,

    Thanks for your sharing. If you still have any question about it, you are welcome to create a new thread in our forum for a better assistance.

    Regards,

    Carlos

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  4. 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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  5. 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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