Strange Characters in Signatures (and elsewhere?)
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
newsgroups, but that doesn't seem to have generated any solution.
When I edit any of my signatures through the facilities in Outlook,
SOMETHING is inserting three characters before the signature. The three
characters that appear are:
These characters represent the codes:
0xEF 0xBB 0xBF
When the codes appear in messages, they also appear in at least SOME of the
three files (.htm, .rft, and .txt) in %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures.
HOWEVER, deleting the codes from the files (for example, by opening each
file in Notepad) DOES NOT eliminate the codes in signatures inserted in
E-mail messages!
However, I don't seem to be generating these characters in message headers
(the problem Brian Tillman noticed in a message header posted by Jim Goeben
2005/03/24 13:19).
I'm running Microsoft Windows XP Professional Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack
2 Build 2600, and Outlook XP (10.6515.6735 SP3) with all service packs and
updates applied.
Does anybody have any idea what is generating these characters? I would be
particularly interested in suggestions to eliminate them.
--
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
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Brian Tillman
> When I edit any of my signatures through the facilities in Outlook,
> SOMETHING is inserting three characters before the signature. The
> three characters that appear are:
> 
> These characters represent the codes:
> 0xEF 0xBB 0xBF
Are you using Word as your mail editor? Perhaps those characters are
embedded in the Word template you're using when you compose.
--
Brian Tillman
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
No, I'm NOT using Word as my E-mail editor. I use the Outlook form instead.
Also, please note that I have five different signatures defined. Three of
them, which I have NOT edited in Outlook in over a year, work normally. The
other two, which I have edited in Outlook recently, cause the generation of
the strange characters. In all cases, I am using the same E-mail editor, the
same form, and the same fonts for my messages.
My default mail format is HTML. If I am replying to a plain-text message,
the signature is generated without the strange characters. If I switch the
message format to RTF (a bit of a pain, because it requires switching to
Plain Text first), the signature is generated without the strange
characters. However, the HTML file in the %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
folder is about as plain as it can be: here's an example (with some of the
text replaced for the sake of my privacy):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Corporate Signature</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV align=left>Michael S. Meyers-Jouan, Director of Operations<BR>Company,
Inc.<BR>Street Address<BR>City, ST 99999<BR>+1 (000) 000-0000
x2<BR>Fax: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR>Cellular: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR><A
href="http://www.company.com">http://www.company.com</A></DIV></BODY></HTML>
There certainly doesn't seem to be anything in this HTML to cause strange
characters.
Do you have any other thoughts?
--
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
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"Brian Tillman" <tillm...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:uqJRBcI4...@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> Michael S. Meyers-Jouan <Michael__...@Meyers-Jouan.name> wrote:
>
>> When I edit any of my signatures through the facilities in Outlook,
>> SOMETHING is inserting three characters before the signature. The
>> three characters that appear are:
>>
Pat Willener
Do you need your signature to be in UTF-8 ? What happens if you change
it to ISO-8859-1 ? (See
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=0xEF+0xBB+0xBF&btnG=Google+Search
for some info on the character sequence you encounter).
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
OK, so the three characters that are appearing:
These characters represent the codes:
0xEF 0xBB 0xBF
are a UTF-8 BOM. So, I tried editing the signature file to replace the
"utf-8" with either "US-ASCII" or "ISO-8859-1". Regardless of the charset,
Outlook is still generating the same three characters at the beginning of
the signature.
I also took a look at the charset encoding Outlook was using for the
message. I found that it was using UTF-8. By changing the setting in Tools,
Options, Mail Format, International Options, Preferred format for outgoing
messages, I could change the message's charset to US-ASCII. However, no
combination of this setting with any charset in the signature file
eliminated the UTF-8 BOM.
Here's a strange occurrence: when I exit from Outlook completely and restart
it, with the message charset still set to "US-ASCII", Outlook generates the
message using "iso-8859-1"! However, even when I set the charset in the
signature (AND the charset in the message) to "iso-8859-1", I'm still
getting the UTF-8 BOM when I insert the signature in the message. Here's a
copy of the MESSAGE saved as "untitled.htm" (with some of the text changed
for reasons of privacy):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Message</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2769" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV>?
<DIV align=left>Michael S. Meyers-Jouan, Director of Operations<BR>Company,
Inc.<BR>Street Address<BR>City, ST 99999<BR>+1 (000) 000-0000
x2<BR>Fax: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR>Cellular: +1 (000) 000-0000<BR><A
href="http://www.company.com/">http://www.company.com</A></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>
Opening the "untitled.htm" file in Internet Explorer also displays the UTF-8
BOM (unless I change View, Encoding to "UTF-8").
Another strange occurrence: if I edit the signature using Outlook (Tools,
Options, Mail Format, Signatures, select a signature, click Edit, insert a
space at the beginning of the signature, delete that space, save the
"changes"), Outlook stores new versions of the .RTF and .TXT files, and BOTH
FILES HAVE THE UTF-8 BOM INSERTED.
At the same time, I have other signature files that have virtually identical
content, but which Outlook inserts in messages WITHOUT the UTF-8 BOM being
displayed. Oddly enough, when I use one of these signatures, the MESSAGE
uses the "US-ASCII" encoding (not the "iso-8859-1" coding); and the
SIGNATURE file contains "charset=utf-8"!
Finally, I modified my Outlook settings to FORCE "charset=us-ascii" (Tools,
Options, Mail Format, International Options, UNCHECK Auto-Select encoding
for outgoing messages). Now, inserting one of the "changed" signatures
generates the following sequence in the message:
<BODY>
<DIV>
<DIV align=left>
In other words, Outlook is FORCING the UTF-8 BOM into the message when I use
a signature that I have "changed" in Outlook, even though I have completely
replaced all three signature files for that signature; and Outlook is NOT
forcing the UTF-8 BOM into the message when I use a signature that I haven't
"changed" in Outlook.
I can't find any registry entries containing "utf-8" at all. I can't find
any significant registry entries containing "Microsoft\Signatures". I can't
find any registry entries that appear to be associated with Office or
Outlook that would affect different signatures differently. I can't find any
files that Outlook might be modifying to affect different signatures
differently. I'm stumped!
--
Michael S. Meyers-Jouan
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E-mail first name at last name ".name"
"Pat Willener" <nob...@devnull.spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:OSOyKmP4...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>> The HTML file in the %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures folder is about as