Intermittent blank e-mail problem with Outlook 2003

  • Thread starter Thread starter Marc Collins
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Marc Collins

Small organization with 4 machines (all running XP SP2). 3 physical
locations for these machines, with 3 different ISP's. One external/ISP POP3
mail server. All machines are running Outlook 2003 SP1 (11.6359.6408). 3
of the 4 receive blank messages on an intermittent basis, but only from 3
regular contacts of the organization (3 different domains). All other mail,
in and out, works perfectly. All Outlooks are configured identically except
that the 4th (working) machine also connects to an Exchange server via a VPN
(it receives the POP account separately and that is set-up the same as the
other 3).

Hotfix KB833984 applied--no effect.

One of the senders has noticed that all messages sent to us from his home
Outlook Web Access produce blanks, whereas mail sent from his office is
intermittently blank. There is no similar pattern from the other two
senders.

Uninstalled and re-installed Outlook on one machine as a last resort
test--no effect.

The 4th computer (newest one) receives no blanks.

We have scanned for viruses several times (from the outset)--all clean
according to NAV2005.

ISP has Webmail access for these POP accounts. Messages appear there, but
become blank once downloaded by Outlook.

No one has been able to help figure this out so far, so I am appealing to
everyone here! I can't figure it out!

Thanks,

Marc

--
****************************************************************************
Marc Collins
(e-mail address removed)

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Marc Collins said:
Small organization with 4 machines (all running XP SP2). 3 physical
locations for these machines, with 3 different ISP's. One external/ISP
POP3 mail server. All machines are running Outlook 2003 SP1
(11.6359.6408). 3 of the 4 receive blank messages on an intermittent
basis, but only from 3 regular contacts of the organization (3 different
domains). All other mail, in and out, works perfectly. All Outlooks are
configured identically except that the 4th (working) machine also connects
to an Exchange server via a VPN (it receives the POP account separately
and that is set-up the same as the other 3).

Hotfix KB833984 applied--no effect.

One of the senders has noticed that all messages sent to us from his home
Outlook Web Access produce blanks, whereas mail sent from his office is
intermittently blank. There is no similar pattern from the other two
senders.
Click to expand...

<<SNIPPED>>

I have Outlook 2003 also. It's been running fine for a very long time. Just
recently I have been receiving some emails that come to me with Subject
headings the whole nine yards... but NO text in the email message.

Now the strange part. When I get new email, (I have "notify" turned on) the
incoming message appears in the system tray and alerts me. This pop-up
notified shows the first few lines of text in the email message! Go figure?
When I open it up, no text.

Stranger yet... if I forward that email to say my Gmail account... I get all
the text that was originally in the email.

I'm at a loss? One instance where this happens regularly is notification
email from NetFlix (DVD subscription outfit).

Thanks,
Steve Banks
 
Marc Collins said:
Small organization with 4 machines (all running XP SP2). 3 physical
locations for these machines, with 3 different ISP's. One external/ISP
POP3 mail server. All machines are running Outlook 2003 SP1
(11.6359.6408). 3 of the 4 receive blank messages on an intermittent
basis, but only from 3 regular contacts of the organization (3 different
domains). All other mail, in and out, works perfectly. All Outlooks are
configured identically except that the 4th (working) machine also connects
to an Exchange server via a VPN (it receives the POP account separately
and that is set-up the same as the other 3).
Click to expand...

Marc, for my problem I stated earlier (no text in some messages) it appears
for some reason those emails with no text were "Encoded" in Latin ISO. Not
Western European (Windows). Open those emails and select the View pull-down
menu and see what it reads, if it's anything other than Western European...
that's the problem.

Hope this helps,
Steve Banks
 
Hmmmmmm...

The problem messages seem to be encoded as Unicode (UTF-8), although other
messages from the same people are US-ASCII.

What does that mean?

Marc
 
Sorry for the top post folks...

Marc, let's not worry about what it all means quite yet. Change the codes
of the ones that you can not see the text in to US-ASCII or change it to
Western European (Windows) and see if that takes care of the problem. Let us
know if that solves the issues.

Then you can concern yourself with why. For me problem, I've identified it,
how to solve it... but not the why yet.
 
Changing the encoding on an already received message does nothing in these
cases. I would expect that since the encoding was done at the originating
end. If Outlook 2003 was capable of unencoding the message properly, it
would do it automatically, would it not?

There is also an MS-reported issue about using an older (97-2002) .pst file
in 2003 that can cause some unicode issues. That's not the case here--all
are "new" 2003 installations.

Marc
 
Marc Collins said:
Changing the encoding on an already received message does nothing in these
cases. I would expect that since the encoding was done at the originating
end. If Outlook 2003 was capable of unencoding the message properly, it
would do it automatically, would it not?

There is also an MS-reported issue about using an older (97-2002) .pst
file in 2003 that can cause some unicode issues. That's not the case
here--all are "new" 2003 installations.
Click to expand...

As I said earlier, this works for my issues, I thought it might help for
yours. I "can" change the encoding after I receive the ones that have been
giving me problems. My problem was what appeared to be no text at all in the
body of the emails, it was there I just couldn't see it until I changed the
encoding for that message. The offending message is open and I'm looking at
it, then I change the encoding and Bam! there's the text.

Outlook does unencode automatically to my knowledge (experts jump in
anytime!)... but again we are talking about something in encoding that is
"broken," which is why we have the issues in the first place. We now know
the area of our problems and have identified a possible culprit. Now we just
need to find a way to fix it or jerry-rig it to solve the problems until MS
comes up with a fix/patch for something that is obviously flawed.

"New" installations of Office 2003. You need to make a distinction here. New
installation is different from what is commonly called a "clean install." If
you are upgrading any software from old to new... there can be issues. The
old settings, etc. stay. You're just adding to it. A clean install is where
you are removing all and everything related to the older version and
installing the new product all on it's own. In this later case, when you
installed the new software using a clean install method, it should ask you
for proof of the older software that you are upgrading from e.g., please
insert Office 2002 CD.

Steve Banks
 
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