Strange Characters in Signatures (and elsewhere?)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
  • Start date Start date
M

Michael S. Meyers-Jouan

I've encountered a problem that has shown up a couple of times in these
newsgroups, but that doesn't seem to have generated any solution.

When I edit any of my signatures through the facilities in Outlook,
SOMETHING is inserting three characters before the signature. The three
characters that appear are:

These characters represent the codes:
0xEF 0xBB 0xBF

When the codes appear in messages, they also appear in at least SOME of the
three files (.htm, .rft, and .txt) in %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures.
HOWEVER, deleting the codes from the files (for example, by opening each
file in Notepad) DOES NOT eliminate the codes in signatures inserted in
E-mail messages!

However, I don't seem to be generating these characters in message headers
(the problem Brian Tillman noticed in a message header posted by Jim Goeben
2005/03/24 13:19).

I'm running Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack
2 Build 2600, and Outlook XP (10.6515.6735 SP3) with all service packs and
updates applied.

Does anybody have any idea what is generating these characters? I would be
particularly interested in suggestions to eliminate them.
 
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan said:
When I edit any of my signatures through the facilities in Outlook,
SOMETHING is inserting three characters before the signature. The
three characters that appear are:

These characters represent the codes:
0xEF 0xBB 0xBF
Click to expand...

Are you using Word as your mail editor? Perhaps those characters are
embedded in the Word template you're using when you compose.
 
Brian,

No, I'm NOT using Word as my E-mail editor. I use the Outlook form instead.

Also, please note that I have five different signatures defined. Three of
them, which I have NOT edited in Outlook in over a year, work normally. The
other two, which I have edited in Outlook recently, cause the generation of
the strange characters. In all cases, I am using the same E-mail editor, the
same form, and the same fonts for my messages.

My default mail format is HTML. If I am replying to a plain-text message,
the signature is generated without the strange characters. If I switch the
message format to RTF (a bit of a pain, because it requires switching to
Plain Text first), the signature is generated without the strange
characters. However, the HTML file in the %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
folder is about as plain as it can be: here's an example (with some of the
text replaced for the sake of my privacy):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Corporate Signature</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV align=left>Michael S. Meyers-Jouan, Director of Operations<BR>Company,
Inc.<BR>Street Address<BR>City, ST 99999<BR>+1 (000) 000-0000
x2<BR>Fax: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR>Cellular: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR><A
href="http://www.company.com">http://www.company.com</A></DIV></BODY></HTML>

There certainly doesn't seem to be anything in this HTML to cause strange
characters.

Do you have any other thoughts?
 
Michael said:
Brian,

No, I'm NOT using Word as my E-mail editor. I use the Outlook form instead.

Also, please note that I have five different signatures defined. Three of
them, which I have NOT edited in Outlook in over a year, work normally. The
other two, which I have edited in Outlook recently, cause the generation of
the strange characters. In all cases, I am using the same E-mail editor, the
same form, and the same fonts for my messages.

My default mail format is HTML. If I am replying to a plain-text message,
the signature is generated without the strange characters. If I switch the
message format to RTF (a bit of a pain, because it requires switching to
Plain Text first), the signature is generated without the strange
characters. However, the HTML file in the %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
folder is about as plain as it can be: here's an example (with some of the
text replaced for the sake of my privacy):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Corporate Signature</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV align=left>Michael S. Meyers-Jouan, Director of Operations<BR>Company,
Inc.<BR>Street Address<BR>City, ST 99999<BR>+1 (000) 000-0000
x2<BR>Fax: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR>Cellular: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR><A
href="http://www.company.com">http://www.company.com</A></DIV></BODY></HTML>

There certainly doesn't seem to be anything in this HTML to cause strange
characters.

Do you have any other thoughts?
Click to expand...

Do you need your signature to be in UTF-8 ? What happens if you change
it to ISO-8859-1 ? (See
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=0xEF+0xBB+0xBF&btnG=Google+Search
for some info on the character sequence you encounter).
 
Pat,

OK, so the three characters that are appearing:

These characters represent the codes:
0xEF 0xBB 0xBF
are a UTF-8 BOM. So, I tried editing the signature file to replace the
"utf-8" with either "US-ASCII" or "ISO-8859-1". Regardless of the charset,
Outlook is still generating the same three characters at the beginning of
the signature.

I also took a look at the charset encoding Outlook was using for the
message. I found that it was using UTF-8. By changing the setting in Tools,
Options, Mail Format, International Options, Preferred format for outgoing
messages, I could change the message's charset to US-ASCII. However, no
combination of this setting with any charset in the signature file
eliminated the UTF-8 BOM.

Here's a strange occurrence: when I exit from Outlook completely and restart
it, with the message charset still set to "US-ASCII", Outlook generates the
message using "iso-8859-1"! However, even when I set the charset in the
signature (AND the charset in the message) to "iso-8859-1", I'm still
getting the UTF-8 BOM when I insert the signature in the message. Here's a
copy of the MESSAGE saved as "untitled.htm" (with some of the text changed
for reasons of privacy):

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Message</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV>?
<DIV align=left>Michael S. Meyers-Jouan, Director of Operations<BR>Company,
Inc.<BR>Street Address<BR>City, ST 99999<BR>+1 (000) 000-0000
x2<BR>Fax: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR>Cellular: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR><A
href="http://www.company.com/">http://www.company.com</A></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>

Opening the "untitled.htm" file in Internet Explorer also displays the UTF-8
BOM (unless I change View, Encoding to "UTF-8").

Another strange occurrence: if I edit the signature using Outlook (Tools,
Options, Mail Format, Signatures, select a signature, click Edit, insert a
space at the beginning of the signature, delete that space, save the
"changes"), Outlook stores new versions of the .RTF and .TXT files, and BOTH
FILES HAVE THE UTF-8 BOM INSERTED.

At the same time, I have other signature files that have virtually identical
content, but which Outlook inserts in messages WITHOUT the UTF-8 BOM being
displayed. Oddly enough, when I use one of these signatures, the MESSAGE
uses the "US-ASCII" encoding (not the "iso-8859-1" coding); and the
SIGNATURE file contains "charset=utf-8"!

Finally, I modified my Outlook settings to FORCE "charset=us-ascii" (Tools,
Options, Mail Format, International Options, UNCHECK Auto-Select encoding
for outgoing messages). Now, inserting one of the "changed" signatures
generates the following sequence in the message:
<BODY>
<DIV>&iuml;&raquo;&iquest;
<DIV align=left>

In other words, Outlook is FORCING the UTF-8 BOM into the message when I use
a signature that I have "changed" in Outlook, even though I have completely
replaced all three signature files for that signature; and Outlook is NOT
forcing the UTF-8 BOM into the message when I use a signature that I haven't
"changed" in Outlook.

I can't find any registry entries containing "utf-8" at all. I can't find
any significant registry entries containing "Microsoft\Signatures". I can't
find any registry entries that appear to be associated with Office or
Outlook that would affect different signatures differently. I can't find any
files that Outlook might be modifying to affect different signatures
differently. I'm stumped!
 
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