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Apostrophe etc converting to question mark in black diamond

Question

Friday, April 4, 2014 12:39 PM

I have read the related threads and do not see an actual answer to the problem other than the suggestion that I turn off Straight Quotes with Smart Quotes which does not make sense as everyone else here has it turned on.  I am one user of many on our system and only a few have this problem.  When I send an email it looks fine.  When I receive the reply back my apostrophes and 3 dots etc are replaced with a question mark inside a black diamond.  

All replies (5)

Friday, April 4, 2014 1:59 PM ✅Answered

Oddly enough, it appears to be all external recipients.  If I send email back and forth with a co-worker, all is well.  I did find some odd fonts listed in Options here and there for column heading etc and discovered that I had a theme called Arctic.  I have changed to no theme and set all fonts I can find to Arial.  I just sent a test email to a friend and all is well.  Thank you.  Your questions led me to the answer.  It was apparently the theme causing the problem.


Friday, April 4, 2014 1:05 PM

It's related to the character set and character encoding you are using and the easiest, sure-fire fix is to disable smart quotes. Using ISO-8859-1 encoding and a standard font should fix it too, but it may still be a problem for a few recipients. Using the basic ACSII characters will guarantee it doesn't happen. 

What encoding are you using? Look in File, Options, Advanced - near the bottom.  Try Western European (ISO), not UTF-8.

What font do you use? Stick with one of the standard fonts. 

Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center
Outlook Tips
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Friday, April 4, 2014 1:23 PM

Thanks for responding.  The encoding is Western European.  The font was Verdana so I tried Arial with the same result.  Very frustrating!


Friday, April 4, 2014 1:43 PM

Does it happen with all messages or just some, to specific recipients? The problem could be on their end.

Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center
Outlook Tips
Subscribe to Exchange Messaging Outlook weekly newsletter


Saturday, April 5, 2014 2:07 AM

Thanks for the update, it may help someone else.

Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center
Outlook Tips
Subscribe to Exchange Messaging Outlook weekly newsletter