WD2002: Content of Message Is Unreadable in a Plain Text E-Mail Message Created in Word (292143)

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Word 2002

This article was previously published under Q292143

SYMPTOMS

When you create an e-mail message in plain text and use Microsoft Word as your default e-mail editor, the content of the message may be received as unreadable graphic characters, in which case, the character set has been unexpectedly changed from us-ascii to utf-8.

CAUSE

This behavior occurs when all of the following conditions are true:

Your default browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later.

-and-
You are using Microsoft Word as your e-mail editor.

-and-
The default font for composing and reading plain text is Arial Special G1.

-and-
The message is composed in plain text.

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, use Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail editor to send plain text messages. To set Outlook as your e-mail editor, follow these steps:

Start Outlook, and then click Options on the Tools menu.
On the Mail Format tab, click to clear the Use Microsoft Word to edit e-mail messages check box, and then click OK.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

Modification Type:	Minor	Last Reviewed:	7/27/2006
Keywords:	kbbug kbnofix KB292143