Error: invalid RTF

[Guest]

Hi,
I haven't seen very much in regards to RTF errors in technet or on the
boards. Since we installed the group of patches including MS07-011, MS07-012,
MS07-013 we started having a lot of problems with sending some RTF messages
and creating messages from mainframe output using RTF. They all started to
error out with no text in the email other than Error: invalid RTF and nothing
in sent items. I have tried to uninstall those three patches and it has
produced limited success but I would like to find a better solution mostly
because those three patches are security patches addressing vulnerabilities
with RTF. Has anyone found this to be a problem and found a solution? My
business area is really getting on our case to fix this and I'm about ready
to open a ticket but thought I would check here first.

Thanks,
mike

 

[Guest]

I forgot to mention that we are using a mix of Exchange2000 and Exchange2003
along with Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003. There doesn't seem to be an issue
with the versions or the servers. I did find that using webmail does not
produce the same problems with RTF.

 

[Guest]

We're getting several reports of this as well. It looks like MS07-013 is the
only one related to rich text (riched20.dll). Seems like there may be
something awry in this hotfix. I'm having as much luck as you are finding
any references to the error...it's almost like it's never happened before.
Coincidentally, Outlook crashed on me several times this morning, and sure
enough, riched20.dll was the culprit. I renamed the file and repaired Office
and it seems to be ok now. Not sure if this approach would bear any results
against the "Invalid RTF" error. If anything new develops I'll pass it along.

Doug

 

[Guest]

Thanks Doug, the riched20.dll is worth a shot. I'll try it on one of my users
and let you know.

I found buried in the vulnerability details of MS07-011 and MS07-012
references to RTF so I lumped all three together as having some impact on RTF
messages. I don't know for sure if all three affect it but it looks like it
from the details.

 

[Guest]

replacing the riched20.dll has not helped with my error.

 

[Guest]

I have opened a ticket with microsoft and they are currently looking into the
possibility of a corrupted riched20.dll from patch ms07-013. I'll let you
know what I find out.

 

[Guest]

Any news back from Microsoft? Some of our Outlook users began experiencing
the same issue when patches were pushed in mid-April...

 

[Guest]

Yes, the word is that they are working on a hotfix and are hoping to have it
by the end of the month. In the interim, they said to try the following:

Some things you can do to avoid the problem:
1 - Roll back the patch that took riched20.dll to 5.50.99.2014. Earlier
builds do not have the problem.
2 - Before sending RTF messages, select all of the text and change the font
- this will "clean" the invalid RTF tags.

 

[tuxis]

Just clarifying what most of you know. There are two KB's associated
with MS07-013. 918118 (RichEdit in Windows). KB920813 (Richedit in
Office) is the one which causes the error in this discussion. The
security bulletin has not yet been updated with the caveat.

Thanks for your posts folks, I appreciate the info you've shared.
bigblacksun, please keep us posted on your ticket.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that information and I will keep everyone updated when I get more
information from MS. I haven't had a chance to test out the option of
restoring the riched20.dll as it was suggested but I did originally rename
them and try a repair with outlook which didn't work. I did find some older
versions of riched20.dll and would like to replace what is currently on the
drive with the older versions and then I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[tuxis]

Hey Everyone,

Symptoms from our clients: client copies text from a 3rd party
application and pastes into a rich text email message. They click
send. The recipient of the email only see the following in the body
of the email.........<<Error: invalid RTF>>.

Our clients are experiencing the issue while using an application
called UIS (from IBM). What apps are your clients using in
conjunction with Outlook when they experience this issue?

We had one other client who typed a new message (no attach/no copy-
paste) and experienced the same issue but she can reproduce the issue.

Workaround 1: using plain text or HTML format for email messages
Workaround 2: use MS Word as the email editor for Rich Test messages


Cheers,
Darren

 

[tuxis]

correction on last post: the 'new message' client canNOT reproduce
the issue

 

[Guest]

Our clients are copying and pasting text from a mainframe output to outlook
2002. They can also use plain text but prefer to customize the font. They
have also been instructed to send the information as a word doc attachment
which will work but they don't want to do that. I am not sure they have tried
HTML but that might be a good option also. We generally don't use word as our
email editor but that did not work for us when we tested it however,
reformatting the entire text should correct the problem also (according to
MS).

Thanks,
mike

 

[tuxis]

Hmmm, is everyone's problem application a mainframe based frontend
app???

Am I seeing a pattern here?

Cheers
Darren

 

[Guest]

I believe so.

I did ask my user about using HTML and she said that it didn't work to
switch because it added additional lines to the email. I am trying to
co-ordinate with her still on replacing riched20.dll's on her system to see
if that will fix the problem and I've asked her to try changing the font on
the whole email as MS suggested but I haven't heard if that corrects the RTF
problem also. I'll let you know what I find out.

thanks,
mike

 

[Guest]

So here's the latest. I completed some additional testing with my user and as
it turns out, changing the font to HTML didn't help her out. I was able to
get both of the MS suggestions to work though. I had her create an email with
a paste of text from the mainframe and then reformat the font for the whole
email. That change did not cause the RTF error and the email arrived intact.
I was also able to remove all of her copies of riched20.dll and replace them
with older versions that we had prior to MS07-013 patch. That also resolved
the problem but you have to actually replace those dll's and not try to
re-create them after removing them. When I had tried to re-create them
previously, they were still corrupted and caused the error message to appear.

At least now we have two work-arounds for the problem and they are not too
difficult to implement. I just don't want to have to make the dll changes on
all of the affected systems so I'm only going to do the ones that have the
most trouble and hopefully the hotfix will be ready to take care of the rest.

 

[tuxis]

Hey All,

Mike, dont know if you got my other post. Would you mind sending your
Microsoft case ID to myself or posting it so the MS Tech working my
case can share info with your Tech?

Cheers,
Darren

 

[tuxis]

Just had another client report this issue but she was copy/pasting
from an Excel spreadsheet, not a front end to a mainframe.

Cheers,
D

 

[tuxis]

Hey all,

I tried having my client (one of the frontend to mainframe clients)
paste into the body of a richedit and then change to HTML. This did
not fix the issue.

She did, however, try the following....
- when she pasted into the email, click the clipboard icon
- select 'Keep text only' option

This is another successful workaround

Cheers,
Darren

 

[Guest]

Darren,
My case number is SRX070405603101. I hope it helps.

mike