Word as EMail Editor in Outlook, Smartquote Problem

[MS]

Using Office 2003 in Win XP Pro. Word is set as e-mail editor in Outlook.

Word is set to use smartquotes, as they look better than the plain straight
quotes, in Word documents.

However, that seems to cause problems in Outlook e-mail. Spell-checker
reports that words are spelled incorrectly, and if sent as is, the other
party receives them seeing squares instead of quotation marks.

How can I fix this? Has anyone come up with a solution?

 

[Michael S. Kaplan [MSFT]]

You have to pick a font that you know has the characters, since not everyone
receiving it is guaranteed to have the same font story that you have....

--
MichKa [Microsoft]
NLS Collation/Locale/Keyboard Technical Lead
Globalization Infrastructure, Fonts, and Tools
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap

This posting is provided "AS IS" with
no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[MS]

You have to pick a font that you know has the characters, since not
everyone receiving it is guaranteed to have the same font story that you
have....

But this problem occurs even in a plain text e-mail (my default), in which
one does not choose a font.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Using Office 2003 in Win XP Pro. Word is set as e-mail editor in
Outlook.
Word is set to use smartquotes, as they look better than the plain
straight quotes, in Word documents.

However, that seems to cause problems in Outlook e-mail. Spell-checker
reports that words are spelled incorrectly,

Can you give an example of this? I can't seem to reproduce the spell-check
problem.

and if sent as is, the
other party receives them seeing squares instead of quotation marks.

That's the fault of their email reader and the smartquote itself. I can't
even remember what ASCII character the smart quote is, but it isn't actually
in your standard ASCII character set (unless I'm just really tired).

How can I fix this? Has anyone come up with a solution?

Don't use word as your e-mail editor?

 

[MS]

Can you give an example of this? I can't seem to reproduce the
spell-check problem.

Set Word as your e-mail editor. Set Word to use smartquotes. Then create a
plain text e-mail that includes apostrophes and/or quotation marks, and
spell-check it. (The spell-check thing doesn't occur with HTML e-mails.)

If you don't get the spell-checker reporting I'm or other such word as a
mistake, then I don't know if something is wrong in my configuration.

That's the fault of their email reader and the smartquote itself. I can't
even remember what ASCII character the smart quote is, but it isn't
actually in your standard ASCII character set (unless I'm just really
tired).

One would think that Word would be smart enough to use normal (straight)
quotes in a plain text e-mail.

Don't most modern e-mail programs read the higher characters though, for
instance with foreign characters, accented characters, etc.? Don't most
standard fonts like Arial, etc., include the higher characters?

I get e-mail replies that have my text quoted, and I see those square boxes
replacing quote characters in the text quoted from my previous message. I'm
not really sure what appeared on the other party's screen, but I assume that
happened on their computer, as the text in my original message had appeared
correctly before sending it.

Don't use word as your e-mail editor?
--

True, that is one solution. I have found some advantages (especially in HTML
e-mail) of having Word as the e-mail editor, but I don't know why it messes
up the quotes. I was wondering if something like changing the encoding might
fix the problem.

 

[F.H. Muffman]

Set Word as your e-mail editor. Set Word to use smartquotes. Then
create a plain text e-mail that includes apostrophes and/or quotation
marks, and spell-check it. (The spell-check thing doesn't occur with
HTML e-mails.)
If you don't get the spell-checker reporting I'm or other such word
as a mistake, then I don't know if something is wrong in my
configuration.

I think you might be doing something wrong for two reasons. =)

1) I didn't get any spelling mistakes in a message that had both double and
single quotes (aka an apostrophe). So, on your system, if you type This is
a "test", it says that test is not spelled correctly?
2) The quotes didn't actually change to smart quotes once I changed the
dropdown to 'Plain Text' and started typing. Do you see the quote mark
change in Outlook? How are you setting up the mail to be plain text?

One would think that Word would be smart enough to use normal
(straight) quotes in a plain text e-mail.

Actually, based on what I just did, it is. The only way it keeps the 'smart
quotes' is if I write the message in HTML and then convert it to plaintext.

Lets try and see what might be going on on yours to make it not quite so
smart.

But, on the other side, I'm not even sure what character code the quote is
in terms of ASCII. I don't see it on any charts (tho it's alt-0147/0148 in
charmap).

 

[Bob Eaton]

2) The quotes didn't actually change to smart quotes once I changed the

dropdown to 'Plain Text' and started typing. Do you see the quote mark
change in Outlook? How are you setting up the mail to be plain text?

In Tools, Options, Mail Format tab, the area near the top "Message format",
you might change some things as 'Compose in this..." to Plain text. In
Internet Format, try "Convert to HTML" or "Convert to Plain Text", and in
International options, try "Preferred encoding" to UTF-8.

Bob

 

[MS]

I think you might be doing something wrong for two reasons. =)

1) I didn't get any spelling mistakes in a message that had both double
and single quotes (aka an apostrophe). So, on your system, if you type
This is a "test", it says that test is not spelled correctly?

Try words with apostrophes in the middle, such as I'll. With those the
spell-checker shows me the word with straight quotes for replacement.

If that doesn't happen to you, I wonder what is wrong with my settings, to
cause this to happen to me.

2) The quotes didn't actually change to smart quotes once I changed the
dropdown to 'Plain Text' and started typing. Do you see the quote mark
change in Outlook? How are you setting up the mail to be plain text?

Yes, in plain text e-mail I compose, there is some kind of curved quotes,
looking rather strange in plain text.

In Tools, Options, Mail Format tab, the area near the top "Message format",
'Compose in this..." is set to Plain text.

 

[MS]

In Tools, Options, Mail Format tab, the area near the top "Message
format", you might change some things as 'Compose in this..." to Plain
text. In Internet Format, try "Convert to HTML" or "Convert to Plain
Text", and in International options, try "Preferred encoding" to UTF-8.

Bob

"Compose in this" has been set to Plain Text, all along. Internet Format is
set to convert "Rich Text" to HTML. Preferred encoding was Western European
(Windows). I changed it to Unicode (UTF-8), and still have the same problem.

 

[Brian Tillman]

But this problem occurs even in a plain text e-mail (my default), in
which one does not choose a font.

You can choose a font for Plain Text. Tools>Options>Mail Format>Fonts. Use
the "When composing and reading Plain Text" setting. Choose a font
containing the curly quote characters that your recipient is likely to have.

 

[Michael S. Kaplan [MSFT]]

That font setting is for your authoring machine, not for the destination
machine (which has its own settings and rules for plain text email. The are
clearly not (for example) likely to be using Outlook?

--
MichKa [Microsoft]
NLS Collation/Locale/Keyboard Technical Lead
Globalization Infrastructure, Fonts, and Tools
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap

This posting is provided "AS IS" with
no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Brian Tillman]

That font setting is for your authoring machine, not for the
destination machine (which has its own settings and rules for plain
text email. The are clearly not (for example) likely to be using
Outlook?

You're correct, I'm not. If you send plain text, no matter what it might
look like on the source end, the destination end will present it with its
settings.

 

[MS]

I don't know what other parties use. I'm not referring to one particular
other party. Rather, I know there's a problem because my own Outlook
spell-checker reports words such as I'm as misspelled, and text in a reply
with quoted text from my former messages, shows boxes where the apostrophes
or quote marks were. From the latter, I assume that's how it appeared on the
other party's computer, and it kept looking like that in the quoted text on
my computer.'

I don't know that none of the other parties involved were using Outlook. It
is one of the most frequently used e-mail programs, and since this has
happened with multiple recipients, I assume it includes Outlook users, but I
don't know.