How do I block Chinese characters in email subjects?

[Guest]

We've noticed that a lot of our emails coming back from Honk Kong are have
Chinese characters and "box characters" in the subject line after the Re:
portion. We doubt they are changing it on their side and suspect that this is
a result of some automatic conversion on their end. How do we disable this
language conversion or otherwise prevent this from happening?

 

[Brian Tillman]

We've noticed that a lot of our emails coming back from Honk Kong are
have Chinese characters and "box characters" in the subject line
after the Re: portion. We doubt they are changing it on their side
and suspect that this is a result of some automatic conversion on
their end. How do we disable this language conversion or otherwise
prevent this from happening?

The "conversion" is probably happening on their end. They're using a
character set appropriate to their region. I don't know how you can prevent
them from doing that.

 

[Pat Willener]

If your Chinese partners are using a Chinese version email client, then
the 'Re' will be placed in Chinese. If you are seing "box characters",
this means that either
- the sender did not specify the correct encoding
- your end is not set up to see Chinese characters. You will need to
run Outlook 2003 or higher in Unicode mode, and need the appropriate
East Asian fonts installed.