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Emails Containing International Characters Appear Corrupt in Microsoft Outlook or GFI MailArchiver

Author: Luis Fernandes Updated

Overview

Some emails show a garbled message body when viewed in Microsoft Outlook, or in GFI MailArchiver.

This problem occurs for emails which use one character set for the message header and a different character set for the message body. When such emails are processed by Microsoft Exchange 2003, the emails will be show garbled in Microsoft Outlook and GFI MailArchiver.

This situation may occur in the following situations:

Emails with different character sets in the header and message body are received from the internet. The email is processed by GFI MailEssentials, and is tagged as spam. The tag may cause the character set of the subject to be different than the one used for the message body. This will expose the problem in Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Emails archived by GFI MailArchiver and having this problem will be stored in Archive Stores with garbled message body. This is due to the fact that GFI MailArchiver archives emails as are in the Microsoft Exchange journal mailbox, in which the message body will be garbled.

Environment

  • GFI MailArchiver
  • GFI MailEssentials
  • Microsoft Exchange 2003 SP1

Root Cause

This problem occurs for emails which use one character set for the message header and a different character set for the message body. When such emails are processed by Microsoft Exchange 2003, the emails will be shown garbled in Microsoft Outlook and GFI MailArchiver.

Resolution

Microsoft has released a hotfix to resolve this issue. More information on the problem and the hotfix can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916299

It is important that, after installing the hotfix and restarting the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service and all dependent services, you follow the second registry change procedure documented in Microsoft’s article. This registry change is documented below as well as the knowledge base article provided by Microsoft.

The PreserveBodyCPID registry entry sets the PR_INTERNET_CPID property to the codepage of the body of the message. This registry entry is configured under the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\MSEXCHANGEIS\PARAMETERSSYSTEM\InternetContent

  • Name: PreserveBodyCPID
  • Value Type: DWORD
  • Value data: 1

NOTES:

  • The hotfix requires Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).
  • The garbled emails archived in GFI MailArchiver will remain garbled even after applying the hotfix. You would need to ask the sender to resend the emails in order to have the email archived correctly in GFI MailArchiver.