OL2000: Message Subject Is Corrupted (302732)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Outlook 2000
This article was previously published under Q302732

SYMPTOMS

The message subject shown in Outlook may appear corrupted, but if you check the Internet header of the message by using an operating system with the same language as the message subject, you may be able to view the correct message subject.

CAUSE

This issue can occur if the message subject has double-byte character set (DBCS) characters, but the DBCS characters are set in the message header directly, instead of encoded based on the Request for Comments (RFC) 1522 document.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, make sure that the originating message is encoded based on RFC 1522 if message headers contain non-ASCII text.

MORE INFORMATION

To view the Internet header of the message:
  1. Open the message in Outlook.
  2. On the View menu, click Options.
  3. Check the Internet headers box in the message options.
Some Internet mail programs can only process ASCII characters. Therefore, to properly deliver mail that contains non-ASCII characters in the message headers, you need to encode the non-ASCII characters with ASCII characters. RFC 1522 is the Internet standard that describes how to encode non-ASCII characters in the message headers with printable ASCII characters.

If the message subject is not encoded based on RFC 1522, for each byte in the subject, if the highest bit is 1, the bit is set to 0 to make the byte an ASCII character. The subject that is displayed in Outlook is the text after such a conversion.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:11/5/2003
Keywords:kbprb KB302732
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.