Microsoft KB Archive/167939

= Microsoft Knowledge Base =

Cannot View Mail Received from Geocities Account
Last reviewed: July 30, 1997

Article ID: Q167939



BETA INFORMATION BETA INFORMATION  BETA INFORMATION  BETA

This article discusses a Beta release of a Microsoft product. The information in this article is provided as-is and is subject to change without notice.

No formal product support is available from Microsoft for this Beta product. For information about obtaining support for a Beta release, please see the documentation included with the Beta product files, or check the Web location from which you downloaded the release.

BETA INFORMATION BETA INFORMATION  BETA INFORMATION  BETA

The information in this article applies to:


 * Microsoft Outlook Express version 4.0 for Windows 95
 * Microsoft Outlook Express version 4.0 for Windows NT 4.0
 * Microsoft Internet Mail and News version 1.0 for Windows 95
 * Microsoft Internet Mail and News version 1.0 for Windows NT 4.0

SYMPTOMS
When you receive a message using a Geocities account, you may be unable to view any of the original message, or you may see only the following information:

Postage Paid by... [graphic]

CAUSE
This problem can be caused by either of the following situations:


 * Geocities replaced the content-type header incorrectly and Outlook Express is unable to determine the boundaries needed to display the message.
 * The message content type is multipart/mixed.

RESOLUTION
You should be able to view the contents of the original message by viewing the message source. To view the message source, follow these steps:


 * 1) Click the message to select it.
 * 2) On the File menu, click Properties.
 * 3) On the Details tab, click Message Source.

STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Internet Explorer 4.0 Platform Preview 1. This problem does not occur with Internet Explorer 4.0 Platform Preview 2. To obtain Internet Explorer 4.0 Platform Preview 2, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/

MORE INFORMATION
There are two separate issues involved in this problem. The first issue involves the method by which Geocities modifies the incoming message in order to add its advertisement. To add this advertisement, Geocities rewrites the message by replacing it using a different content type.

In Internet Mail and News version 1.0, the content type and header is one line. For example:

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="NextPart1---" In Outlook Express version 4.0, the content type and header is two lines. For example:

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="NextPart1---" Note that the boundary part of this statement is on a separate line. This is correct syntax according to RFC 1521; a line with one or more leading spaces is considered a continuation of the preceding line.

Geocities removes the first line, which orphans the second-line boundary descriptor. Outlook Express is unable to distinguish the multiple parts of the message correctly.

The second issue is that Internet Mail and News and Outlook Express do not handle the multipart/mixed MIME type correctly. In most cases, a multipart/mixed type is displayed part after part. If there is a file name header in one of the parts, it is included as a file attachment. In Internet Mail and News and Outlook Express, if a file name is not specified, the parts are ignored and the message is not displayed.