Sep 16, 2014 - Outlook on the web; Outlook 2016/2013 for Windows; Outlook 2016 for Mac. Outlook 2016 for Mac. Message format default html plain text rich outlook 2016 for mac windows outlook 2013 font size web Suggest keywords. Weird characters appearing in the text of a reply email in Outlook can be caused by using the wrong email encoding, AutoFormat settings in Word, wrong text formatting or a corrupted Outlook profile. Wrong Encoding.
February 27, 2017 The Importance of Content-Type HTML Character Encoding in Email There have been many questions raised by our members on how email clients set the Content-Type within their HTML emails. As you may already know, the Content-Type plays a major role in the way an email will be displayed, especially with respect to special characters in non-Latin languages or when copying from a text editor like Microsoft Word.
In summary, all email clients ignore the Content-Type defined within your meta tag. Instead, they read it from the Content-Type value that is in the header of your email. The character type value within the header is automatically set by the server sending your email. This value can be changed but you would need direct access to the email server. The safest solution is to convert all of your special characters to HTML entities and we have created a to help assist you in that process.
How does the email header Content-Type get set? The header content is set by the server sending the email and contains information like To, From, Date, Time, etc.
Some of which is displayed at the top of each email when viewing it in an email client. Here is a snippet of an email header (notice the Content-Type value): Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:45:55 -0700 To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: UTF-8 Message-ID: X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: EOAMailer 5.0.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/html; charset='UTF-8'. Email client test results I sent the above code example to all the email clients that we support. Pretty much every client renders text based on the Content-Type value set in the email header. Gmail is the only client that automatically converts your text to UTF-8, no matter what the header Content-Type is set to. Here are the test results: Clients Content-Type AOL Hotmail Outlook Express Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 Lotus Notes 6.5, 7, 8 and 8.5 Live Mail Windows Mail Entourage 04 and 08 Yahoo Classic, Current, and Beta Thunderbird 2 and 3 iPad iPhone Mail Android Mail Each take the Content-Type from the header of your email Gmail Android Gmail iPhone Gmail iPad Gmail Each convert the Content-Type to UTF-8 One thing that I found very suprising is the fact that the web-based clients convert your text to the Content-Type character set prior to displaying it in the browser. I was able to check this by viewing what Content-Type they were setting in their META tags.
As it turns out most of them are using UTF-8. The Solution Now you might be saying to yourself, great just when I thought designing emails wasn’t complicated enough. It does in-fact add another layer of complexity but there are a couple fairly easy solutions.
Option 1: Contact your email service provider and ask them what Content-Type they set in the header when sending the emails. Once you know the Content-Type use that value in your HTML Meta tag when designing the email. Option 2: Convert all special characters to their and you won’t have to worry about the header Content-Type. For example, the following character “ 漢” has an HTML entity value of “ 漢“. To help assist you in the conversion we have created a free online tool that will for you! Just use this conversion tool before you send your email. In Conclusion It is always important to check your character sets using both IE and Firefox, especially if you are using non-Latin characters or copy/pasting content from a text editor like Microsoft Word.
At this time, when you submit an Acid Test, our servers are configured to send your email using the UTF-8 Content-Type to each of our supported email clients. Just like making any other changes to your email, changing your content-type or the way you encode HTML characters can have a big knock-on effect throughout the rest of the email. Make sure you’re steering clear of any issues by testing for free with our 7 day trial of Email on Acid. EoA Character Encoder is not the best tool. Years ago I discovered that I actually need three tools in one: 1) HTML character encoder; 2) invisible character cleaner/remover; 3) English language style improvement tool. Ideally, in a shape of NPM package which I can use in Gulp, with optional front end, driven by browserified version of it. That’s how detergent.io came to life.
As a critique point, EoA Character Encoder encodes emoji incorrectly, doesn’t decode HTML and can’t adjust between HTML or XHTML closing slashes on BR’s. Detergent.io does all this. Another important point is, encoded entities should be named, not numeric, so you could read them. For example, £ is better than £ when you are checking text. That’s another difference between Detergent.io and EoA Character Converter. I use Salesforce Email Studio (previously Exact Target). It does character conversion for you (inserts entities).
The content type is set within HTML template (in the meta like for a web page; I believe this is for a web version of the email) and when building an email (this I believe is for the email header as you must set it regardless the meta in the template). I tested that HTML entities do depend on the character set settings (aka Language settings / email header meta) so entities from outside a character standard/set won’t show properly unless the character set is properly set up. This still depends on the tool you use – there is no point in setting anything else but the UTF-8. Hi Jon – Great question! There really is no.one. solution, but UTF-8 provides a solution for many.
Per W3.org: “The more widely a character encoding is used, the better the chance that a browser or in this case, email will understand it.” UTF-8 is a good choice because it can support several languages, which means it can accommodate pages and forms that may have a mixture of those languages. It also reduces complexity when dealing with a multilingual site or application, because it eliminates the need for server-side logic to individually determine the encoding for each page or form submission. More info is available here: I hope that helps! Thanks for reading.
Level 10 (80,548 points) Oct 31, 2014 9:30 AM It looks like a bug in the decoding system, most likely Latin 1 sequences being misread as if they were UTF-8. Try adding a Unicode dingbat to the bottom of the Reply text, such as this one: ✉ That should force UTF-8 encoding, which may help.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125459523/440389300.png)
On the other rend. Forcing Unicode (UTF-8) To remedy this problem in Outlook for Mac, the sender can choose Format Text Encoding Unicode (UTF-8) before sending his message: Or try reading them in a Browser & WebMail. Apple Footer.
This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums.
Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.