Illegible emails and attachments

[Guest]

Hi,

Perhaps 5% of my incoming email and, more often, email attachments are
illegible. I get a page filled with symbols that look like:

@@ñ½mC\ª·!†5ÿícÄ﷓ ‡R×g2ÊÓH#™À £ôýEvö<¿Åþo‡¾6Ò#ñ Ôº ˆ®ï] üÃy

Sometimes, if this happens with an incoming email, when I click "Reply" to
answer it, the page clears up and I can read it.

With attachments, I've found no way to make them legible.

I was told that these illegible pages are signs that a program I'm using is
trying to read incoming photos as text and that if I go to Tools/Folder
Options in XP, I can correct it.

I went to XP/Tools/Folder Options and there are three programs I can see
there that might read photos. They are JPE, JPEG and JPG and they are all are
described as "Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Picture" but I can't tell which, if
any of them, are causing the problem and if one or all of them are causing
it, how to correct it or them.

Is this the right way to correct this illegibility problem?

Should I even have all three of these programs?

Should I delete two of them?

Which two?

If I should keep them all, or any of them, how do I correct it or them to
read the incoming email photos properly?


Bruce

 

[Sharon F]

Hi,

Perhaps 5% of my incoming email and, more often, email attachments are
illegible. I get a page filled with symbols that look like:

@@ñ½mC\ª·!†5ÿícÄ﷓ ‡R×g2ÊÓH#™À £ôýEvö<¿Åþo‡¾6Ò#ñ Ôº ˆ®ï] üÃy

Sometimes, if this happens with an incoming email, when I click "Reply" to
answer it, the page clears up and I can read it.

With attachments, I've found no way to make them legible.

I was told that these illegible pages are signs that a program I'm using is
trying to read incoming photos as text and that if I go to Tools/Folder
Options in XP, I can correct it.

I went to XP/Tools/Folder Options and there are three programs I can see
there that might read photos. They are JPE, JPEG and JPG and they are all are
described as "Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Picture" but I can't tell which, if
any of them, are causing the problem and if one or all of them are causing
it, how to correct it or them.

Is this the right way to correct this illegibility problem?

Should I even have all three of these programs?

Should I delete two of them?

Which two?

If I should keep them all, or any of them, how do I correct it or them to
read the incoming email photos properly?


Bruce

The items you've listed are not programs. They are extensions that
designate "file type."

Folder Options> File Types displays the file extensions that have been
registered on your system and what program is currently "associated" with
that extension. XP ships with some default file types and associations
already listed. As you install software that is capable of reading and
creating other file formats (and in some cases the same file formats), they
are added to the list. NOTE: The purpose of associating a file type with a
program is to let you view a file by double clicking on it instead of
opening the program and using File> Open.

Sorry, I have no idea why someone sent you to this screen for your OE
problem. I can't see how that is going to help with the problem. (Leave the
JPG, JPE, JPEG listings alone!)

I no longer use Outlook Express but when I do and need more information
than what the program has to offer in its help file, I head to the
Microsoft Knowledge Base or to Tom Koch's excellent website devoted to
Outlook Express:
http://www.insideoe.com

The section about problems with image previews is here:
http://www.insideoe.com/problems/bugs.htm#nopreview

There are also newsgroups on the Microsoft servers that are specifically
for Outlook Express topics.

The web based interface:
http://support.microsoft.com/newsgroups/?pr=956

And this page has a list of links for Microsoft newsgroups that will
automatically open the newsgroup in your default newsreader:
http://aumha.org/nntp.htm