Weird problem of the day - Chinese edition

[HCHTech]

Ok - this is a new one. Outlook 2016 desktop program, client is on M365, email-only plan. Office is up to date, as is her 3-year old Win10 computer. Very randomly, like once per month, when she replies to a message, the version of that reply that ends up in the Sent folder has the body of the message formatted with Microsoft JhengHei font - all Chinese characters. The subject line is fine. The reply that the sender receives is normal english formatted in Calibri 11, I think.

There are no additional languages installed in Outlook, the region setting in Control Panel is correct, and that little checkbox for "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" is NOT checked.

The problem is intermittent, and there appears to be nothing special about the message that was replied to, or nothing common about the senders email (not always Gmail, for example).

There are no addins being run in Outlook, and this problem is affecting only a single user out of 5 in the office. I didn't check to see if that sent message was in Chinese in OWA - so I should probably do that.

I did an online repair of Office and just asked them to call again if it happens again, but this is definitely unusual. Anyone run into something similar and have any clever suggestions?

 

[callthatgirl]

Is it that way on the phone or in OWA?

 

[HCHTech]

That's one thing I didn't check, but I've sent an email to ask the user to check - I'll edit this reply when I hear back.

I'm guessing that would mean the problem is at the tenant somehow and NOT with the local computer of Office install, correct?

Edit: User reports that the message is MISSING from the sent folder on OWA.

 

[HCHTech]

Calling @callthatgirl - This just happened again. The client received the reply correctly in english, but the copy of the reply in the Sent Items in Outlook AND in OWA is in Chinese. I'm thinking we might have to open a ticket with Microsoft on this one.

 

[callthatgirl]

Was it sent to the same person? Is it an email thread? New email? Just wondering if it was originally from someone who has the glitch.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Is he checking OWA on another computer NOT the same PC? Is it in Chinese on the phone? I think it might be a corrupted FONT directory in Windows and he is only noticing the problem in Outlook because that is the most used program. Windows is displaying the wrong font.

 

[HCHTech]

Is he checking OWA on another computer NOT the same PC? Is it in Chinese on the phone?

Yes, even from another computer that never had this problem the message is garbled in the sent items directory in OWA. They don't have their phones setup to get email, so I can't check that.

I found a Reddit thread mentioning this issue more generally, and a fix/workaround was to change the default outgoing encoding from "Western European (ISO)" which is the default choice (I suppose when Windows is installed with English as the chosen language), to "Unicode (UTF-8)". I have no idea if this will help or why things are going awry in the first place, but I made the change so I guess we'll see whether that solves the issue or not.

 

[britechguy]

@HCHTech,

Any status on whether that fix worked?

 

[HCHTech]

No - it didn't work. I just got another email today....."It happened again!". This is an Appriver client, so I've opened a ticket with them - I'll share what they find.

 

[britechguy]

@HCHTech,

Thanks. This is just so curious that knowing what is the underlying cause is intriguing.