Strange characters inserted in body of sent emails

Elizabeth Frazee 1 Reputation point
2020-12-01T22:23:53.57+00:00

I use 365 exchange. It suddenly began inserting strange symbols, including chinese characters, in my emails between the header info and the text I have typed. What to do? I see them on my sent emails, but the recipient can't see them. Is this a problem?

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
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  1. Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
    2020-12-02T02:52:57.667+00:00

    Hi @Elizabeth Frazee ,
    What's the version of your Outlook(File>Office account>About Outlook), please ensure that you have updated to the latest version.

    Could these sent mails be displayed normally on your web mail? And could this issue be reproduced if you send the message from web mail?

    Based on my research, the issue about strange characters may be related to your encoding of messages, it's suggested to check your encoding setting and change it to "Unicode(UTF-8)" to test if the issue has any difference(File>Options>Advanced>International options).
    44166-snipaste-2020-12-02-10-21-05.png
    If that's invalid, the interference of add-ins and antivirus programs may also affect your issue, please try to temporarily close other programs and run Outlook in safe mode to check if you could send the message without any strange caracters(Windows + R>type "Outlook.exe /safe">enter)

    Besides, considering the messages could display normally in recipient's Inbox, if the sent messages also have no issue on your web mail, I'm afraid this issue is related to your corrupted data files, it's suggested to rename your data file(.ost) and restart Outlook to check if the issue still exists (File location: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook).

    If your issue has any update, please feel free to post back.


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