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
    2019-06-20T12:13:20+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...

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-06-11T05:42:03+00:00

    I've got troubles with this issue since we bought a set of new Dell laptops (latitude and XPS).

    I seems that only these are affected.  All the possible solutions mentioned above did not work for me.

    I still need to test a full re-installation of the laptops but hoped that that would not be needed since it will be time consuming.

    Sander

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-05T15:40:37+00:00

    Thank you, Dr. ArtieKopelman, for your note about turning off the signature.  My Outlook has been working nicely after trying both fixes discussed in this thread (first, turning off McAfee anti-spam; and second turning on anti-spam but disabling the Add-in).  I'm going to try your method.  I re-enabled the Add-in and I unchecked Add McAfee signature as you instructed above.  I'll see how that goes.  Thanks again.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-05T12:18:18+00:00

    You don't have to uncheck the McAfee add-in, just go into the McAfee Software and uncheck the option for adding the McAfee signature

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-05-25T18:00:59+00:00

    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.

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