Outlook 2003 email reply text missing?

[Howie]

Has anyone experienced the following?:

I have received two email replies this evening (from earlier, separate
emails I sent) which appear to be simply a copy of my original email
(i.e., no reply text). The first one I received did not trigger any
alarms as I figured the fellow simply hit the reply key in error, but
when I received a similar one later from another individual, I began
probing.

I emailed one of the guys and asked if he had, as I surmised, simply
hit the reply key in error. He responded quickly, but with another
email which contained only my emails-- and none of his reply text. I
knew he had sent actual text because I saw the email being delivered
in the little pop-up box in the lower bottom right part of the screen
and I read the first part of his reply (quickly, as it faded away...).

I did make one setting change earlier, but I can not believe it might
have caused this issue. I use .html emails and I use a particular
stationery background. I might note at this point, as you might have
suspected, I have not ever had any issues with missing text in email
replies. Anyway, I earlier went to Tools/Options/Mail
Format/Stationery Picker/Edit and changed the font to the one I have
set as my default for composing messages under Tools/Options/Mail
Format/Fonts. I'm not sure why I did this, but for some reason I
thought it odd that these two were different.

I have since changed it back hoping this was the culprit, but I have
yet to hear from either fellow. I will also note that this issue has
only occurred with emails which include my original stationery in the
reply. In other words, emails I sent during this timeframe that were
replied to, but did not have my original stationery as part of the
reply were not impacted by this disappearing reply text.

Any thoughts or help? I am baffled.

Thanks,

--Howie

 

[Oliver]

Howie, I started seeing the same. Looks like text is stripped upon
retrieval (I use POP3). I am only using a HTML based footer and will
remove that now. Let's see whether that makes a difference for me.
Oliver

 

[pamela]

Oliver,
It appears Howie was having this problem back in April, but I, too, am
having it currently as you are. Have you determined what the problem
might be?

I received an email with the reply stripped and thought the sender had
hit the reply button as well. Here's a twist to my situation, though:

I have Office 2003 on both my desktop and my laptop and the laptop
received the reply email with the text included, but the desktop
didn't. I can't determine what the difference in apps is that would
result in this error.
Let me know what you find out, when you can.

Regards,
Pamela

 

[Oliver]

I left the footer, to be honest. But I stopped using Word 2003 as the
editor. I havent' seen the issue since, but I have also not received
much email from the one source where I observed the problem repeatedly.
I will continue to monitor this. Currently I think it is either the
Spam filter (which I also updated with MS's regular update .... will
therefore never know whether the last version was buggy) or the choice
of editor.

 

[Oliver]

Just found this:

SYMPTOMS
When you reply to or forward an e-mail message in Microsoft Outlook,
the e-mail message may be missing information when it is received.

For example, if you forward an e-mail message, the text is missing from
the body of the original e-mail message that you are forwarding when it
is received. Additionally, if you forward an e-mail message, the text
is missing from the body of your reply e-mail message when it is
received.

CAUSE
This problem may occur if the original e-mail message was created with
a Web-based e-mail client and was composed with the following MIME
format: text/<*>multipart/alternativetext/<*>text/<*>

Source:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;842937


I guess this means to stay away from MIME to avoid the problem. I will
continue to use the generic editor in Outlook. Let's see what happens
and whether they release a patch at some point.

 

[Oliver]

So, I have now understood a little more about what the exact symptoms
of my problems are. In fact, there are 3 issues:

(1) If my default text editor in Outlook 2003 is Word 2003, I am
experiencing the problem that text in replies I am receiving from users
that are on a web-enabled Email system disappears. This alludes to the
KB article I referenced above having some merit. Unfortunately I do not
recall which format settings (rich text versus HTML) I was using at the
time. I am getting to the reason why that is important in a second.

(2) When I played with my editor settings a little bit and set the
default editor away from Word to the Outlook default editor, and
changed the default format for outgoing messages to Outlook rich text,
I got feedback from multiple users that attachments I sent them did not
appear in the message - only the winmail.dat file. I got this feedback
from users on 2 web-enabled system, and two others who probably use
Lotus Notus.

(3) I then tested using the default Outlook editor, but with the
default format for outgoing messages set to HTML, and once again
experienced the problem that reply text disappeared (I can reproduce
the problem with a web-enabled email system I have access to).

The bottom line: it may not be the editor, but the format, that causes
this issue. I will stay in plain text until Microsoft fixes this.
However, since this seems to have been around since Outlook 2000, I
have my doubts whether they will do something. May be good enough of a
reason to switch to another client.

Hope this helps.

Oliver

 

[Guest]

I've just started getting the same problem, but only from two people I mail
regularly.
The only point of commonality I can see in the Internet Headers is they both
use Lotus Notes as the X-mailer.
I hate Notes with a passion for other reasons - I wonder if it's now
corrupting e-mails.

 

[Guest]

I'm now having the same problem with mail from 2 of my friends - only from
their office e-mail. I'm using Outlook 2003, but they're using the dreaded
Lotus Notes.
I'm sure that's the problem - I just want to know where to find a solution!

 

[madgerald]

Hi there

I have had the same problem in that I cannot see some of the replies to my e-mails sent from users using Lotus Notes and Apple's version of Outlook.

I have access to Notes and this does allow me to see the reply by accessing the Trash file (the message is moved there when Outlook scoops up the message via POP3) and I can also see the reply in full on my Blackberry.

I have changed my PC (and will do again soon), upgraded from Office 2003 to 2007 and changed my e-mail address but so far nothing works!

I also have the winmail.dat file problem with the same users – in other words excel, word and jpg files get turned into .dat files (yet when they send them back I can open them no problem!)

I will play with the editor and format settings and see if this helps