Aug. 24, 2005

Hi, All!
This Week: Strange Characters in Email

Do you get emails with strange characters or strange fonts in the message? Something that looks like this: We start the day off with an â¤egg-citingâ¤?presentation by the World⤙s
What in the world is that? It is like the movie title "Lost in Translation." Each email program has to translate email messages from the machine code that is used when the data is transmitted over the phone lines, and the receiving email program may not be able to translate the special codes that are used in formatting messages and documents. If the message is sent from one email program to another, the formatting is somewhat restricted so most email programs can translate each other properly.
I will pick on Microsoft's Word and Works programs, as they are the worst offenders. If you really want a fancy note, and you use Microsoft's Word or Works programs and then you do a "Cut and Paste" from Word/Works into your email program, when the email program translates into or from machine code, it changes the special fonts into whatever its default character is for that machine code. The end result may or may not be correct--hence the hard to read email.
If you stick with all Microsoft programs, you do not have this problem as long as all your programs are up-to-date. Microsoft does a good job of making sure its programs work together. But if you are like most of us, you want other email programs out there that have more bells and whistles than the Microsoft offerings. So, if you want the bells and whistles (as I do), you have to put up with the gobbledy-gook in our emails.
'Til next week,
Robert
(ComputerFAQ#255)

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