asked on

MS Outlook 2003 cannot view Traditional / Simplified Chinese Email

Anyone got a solution?

I have friends who send mails to me via their web based account and I cannot view in Outlook 2003. Strangely enough, when I write a mail in T/S Chinese, the mail that goes out became "??? ??? ???" ... the best part is ... when i managed to get a readable mail to them and they replied ... I get "??? ??? ???" in the mail.

is there a solution to this? I can only write mail in Plain text and not using HTML. so frustrating ... anyone with a good idea to help?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Ryan Chong

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Ryan Chong

>>I can only write mail in Plain text and not using HTML
Hmm.. you may try to use Windows Chinese version to resolve your problem.. ?

airnike

ASKER

ryancys : that is not a solution ... if Chinese Windows cannot reslove this ... they can forget about having Chinese windows ... i used to be able to do it ... but after a fresh installation .. it doesn't ... btw ... where are u adding the meta tag?

Ryan Chong

Do you mean the Subject of the email? Ya, i got same problem as you.. I will try to find a solution for you..

>>btw ... where are u adding the meta tag
HTML body content, if the email is in HTML format..

airnike

ASKER

thanks ...

Subject header is ok with the Chinese ... but its the mail content that kills me ...

airnike

ASKER

ryancys - i cannot get it right ... i dunno where to put the tag in MS Outlook ...

Ryan Chong

>> i dunno where to put the tag in MS Outlook
the meta tag is put as part of the html body content in your email, the purpose of it is to auto encode your html, so that when user open the email, he/she can direct view the chinese character content.

For the subject header, some comments here:

http:Q_20940352.html
Comment by Mob-bom:
>>you cannot read the two-byte characters in the subject and from fields within Outlook, but you can in the body and through your browser/webmail

http:Q_10050640.html
Comment by zhanghl:
>>I had similar problem before. In my mind, if both the sender and reader use Chinese version OutLook to view the mail, there is no problem. The problem occurs when the sender uses Chinese OutLook, the reader use English MS-Mail viewer even on a Chinese Windows.

I think you should check the MIME and Character Set settings in OutLook, in order to let it send mails with a proper codepage which the reader can receive.

airnike

ASKER

Sending mails from Outlook to Web based mail are ok ... its the part where they reply ... that gives the "????" or the ASCII characters..."

airnike

ASKER

i think i will as MS for an answer ....

airnike

ASKER

for the content body .... i managed to reslove it .... even communicating using Simplified or Traditional, the email body is able to encode properly ... Thanks!