Strange characters (like: =20) in email formatting (MSN/Hotmail)

[lobdillj]

I suddenly began to see strange formatting characters in emails (like=20, =3B, =2C and so on). Why is this happening and how can I stop it?

Thanks.

Jerry Lobdill
lobdillj@att.net

[jeffk]

Under Tools|Options|ViewingMail
try to change the setting for Use Microsoft's Viewer

[jhmeyers]

Originally Posted by lobdillj

I suddenly began to see strange formatting characters in emails (like=20, =3B, =2C and so on).
Why is this happening and how can I stop it?

Is it only in messages or replies from MSN/Hotmail?

If so, it is this problem, caused by bad message headers:
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=14321
http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showpost.php?p=42435

Here are the same reports on Windows Live help:

"Hotmail webmail sending messages with corrupted headers"
https://windowslivehelp.com/community/t/132914.aspx

"Hotmail bug corrupting email headers"
http://windowslivehelp.com/community/t/131755.aspx

MSN/Hotmail is sending malformed mail,
and recipients are blaming everything from their mail client to their ISP
for something which is caused solely by Microsoft's MSN/Hotmail.

Just more poisoned Halloween candy from good old Microsoft.

[lobdillj]

I tried various options at the Viewing Mail window. No luck.

[jhmeyers]

While waiting for MSN/Hotmail to fix things from their side,
you can get some temporary help from:

"Quoted Printable Encoder/Decoder"
(Eudora plugin, by Brana Bujenovic)
http://e-gadgets.freehostia.com/plugins.htm#qp
http://e-gadgets.freehostia.com/qp.zip

This plugin adds menu items to Eudora's
Edit > Message Plug-ins

You must invoke it manually,
when you see some as yet not decoded Quoted Printable stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted-printable

Eudora will, of course, automatically decode any mail itself
when it is sent with the proper headers,
which MSN/Hotmail is currently failing to do.

[jhmeyers]

See:
http://windowslivehelp.com/community...px?PageIndex=2
http://windowslivehelp.com/community/t/132914.aspx?PageIndex=2

The following is claimed therein, on behalf of Hotmail:

Not sure when we'll have it fixed,
but we'll get it scheduled for an upcoming release.

In the meantime, it appears this only happens on plain text emails,
so if using rich text is an option then that will not exhibit the problem.

[sjap98]

Hi,
How do I install the plugin qp.dll file?
simply placing it in the plugins folder doesn't do the trick,
thank you.
Take care,
Sjap.

Originally Posted by jhmeyers

While waiting for MSN/Hotmail to fix things from their side,
you can get some temporary help from:

"Quoted Printable Encoder/Decoder"
(Eudora plugin, by Brana Bujenovic)
http://e-gadgets.freehostia.com/plugins.htm#qp
http://e-gadgets.freehostia.com/qp.zip

This plugin adds menu items to Eudora's
Edit > Message Plug-ins

You must invoke it manually,
when you see some as yet not decoded Quoted Printable stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted-printable

Eudora will, of course, automatically decode any mail itself
when it is sent with the proper headers,
which MSN/Hotmail is currently failing to do.

[jhmeyers]

Originally Posted by sjap98

How do I install the plugin qp.dll file?
simply placing it in the plugins folder doesn't do the trick

The directions are right in the post which you just quoted.

[sjap98]

Hi Jhmeyers,
Thanks for the reply.
This is what I did:

I have the message needing decoding opened in Eudora.
Or even select the coded bit of text.

I do the following: [Is that what you mean by:"You must invoke it manually,"?]

If I click qp.dll and then open it with Eudora (when prompted to choose a program to open it with) (it still doen't show under Edit>plugins by the way).

I get this pop-up window:
some attachment(s) could not be found and were not attached.

nothing is decoded.


and that's about it...



Would you have any idea of what I'm doing wrong?


.

[jhmeyers]

The QP plugin adds menu items to Eudora's
"Edit" > "Message Plug-ins" menu,
for use in editing an entire message or a selected part.

The menu items are "[E] Encode QP" and "[D] Decode QP"

Put "qp.dll" in the "plugins" sub-folder
of either of the paths ("Data" or "Application")
shown in "Help" | "About Eudora" then restart Eudora.

It should work for Eudora versions 6.2 through 7.1