OL2000: (CW) Cyrillic characters changed to Question Marks (198866)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Outlook 2000
This article was previously published under Q198866
NOTE: These procedures only apply if you have installed Outlook with the Corporate Workgroup/Other option. This option allows you to use Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) services. To determine your installation type, on the Help Menu click About Microsoft Outlook. In About Microsoft Outlook you should see "Corporate" if you have the Corporate Workgroup installation.

SYMPTOMS

Recipients of messages composed using the Cyrillic font see question marks.

CAUSE

The message was sent with plain text set as the default mail format.

MORE INFORMATION

In order to be able to send and receive messages using the Cyrillic character set, the message needs to be in Rich Text Format (RTF). If at any point the Rich Text formatting is lost, the Cyrillic content may be converted to question marks, or to garbled characters. The steps in this article are designed to help you troubleshoot problems with sending messages using the Cyrillic font.

To determine how to resolve this issue, you must discover where the Rich-Text formatting is being lost.

  • Verify that Plain Text is not set as the Default mail format
    1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
    2. On the Mail Format tab, click to select HTML or Microsoft Outlook Rich Text.
    3. Click Apply and OK.
  • Verify that you are not using Plain Text as the default email format for the recipient.
To select the RTF sending option for Contacts, follow these steps:

  1. Select your Contacts folder.
  2. Open the contact in a card view by double-clicking on the card heading.
  3. Double-click on the e-mail address, or right-click the e-mail address, and then click Properties.
  4. Click to select the "Always send to this recipient in Microsoft Exchange rich-text format."
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click Save, and then click Close.
For more information on sending messages in Rich Text Format, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 197423
TITLE : OL2000: How to Specify RTF for Specific E-mail Addresses

Compose and send a message to yourself using Cyrillic characters.

  • When you receive this message in your Inbox, it should contain the proper formatting. If it does not, then this indicates that your SMTP/POP3 server does not support RTF, and you will need to contact your mail server administrator, or use a different mail service to send your Cyrillic messages.
  • If you are able to read Cyrillic messages that you send to yourself, but your recipients are still not able to do so, it indicates that either the mail server on the receiving end, or the receiving client can not handle RTF format, or is not correctly configured to handle Cyrillic messages. You may find it preferable to compose your message in a word processing program using Cyrillic characters, and then attach the document to the email message that you wish to send.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:10/8/2003
Keywords:kbinfo kbprb KB198866
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