Microsoft KB Archive/292143

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

Article ID: 292143

Article Last Modified on 7/27/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Word 2002 Standard Edition

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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.

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

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

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 * 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:
 * 1) Start Outlook, and then click Options on the Tools menu.
 * 2) 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.

Additional query words: garbage characters garbled

Keywords: kbbug kbnofix KB292143

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