language settings in Win XP Pro

[tschless]

I have set my Windows XP Pro and Office XP Pro to regional settings and to use Asian languages. I can type Chinese and Japanese, see all the characters when I go to Asian websites but when I receive emails with asian characters in the email address I see ??????? . The same is true when I use WinZip or Adobe Acrobat on files that have asian characters in the file name.

How can I change the settings of XP Pro so that I don't have this problem.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I assume that you use Outlook as your email client. I think that the English version of Outlook cannot handle multibyte characters in any of the header lines - From, To, Cc, or Subject.

I don't think any Windows setting can change that. I've had this problem for many years, and I'm hoping with each new Office version that it would get corrected. But so far it is still happening with Outlook 2003. (Actually I'm not sure if the multibyte characters turn into question marks on the Exchange Server, before it even reaches Outlook).

I have asked this question before over at the microsoft outlook newsgroups, but never received an answer.

It may be if the encoding is specified (JIS or GB2312) in each header that we may see the multibyte characters correctly, but I am not sure of that. But that is something that sould have been done by the sending email client. When it arrives in your inbox, it is too late.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Probably not many members of this forum know about Japanese or Chinese language settings. But the problem is the same with Unicode characters.

Does anyone know here how to specify Unicode characters in mail headers, so they don't get garbled?

And a P.S.: Mozilla Thunderbird leaves multibyte characters intact.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I just performed a little test; I sent a message (from Mozilla Thunderbird) with Unicode characters in the subject line and body text to both my private account (Thunderbird) and office address (Outlook 2003).

Thunderbird received the message intact.

Outlook replaced the Unicode characters with ???.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Sorry - one more. If you search for "Unicode" in Outlook Help, there is the following info.

About Unicode support

Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 supports Unicode (Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium. By using more than one byte to represent each character, Unicode enables almost all of the written languages in the world to be represented by using a single character set.) and provides full support for multilingual data. If you work in a multinational organization or share messages and items (item: An item is the basic element that holds information in Outlook (similar to a file in other programs). Items include e-mail messages, appointments, contacts, tasks, journal entries, notes, posted items, and documents.) with people who use Outlook on systems that run in other languages, you can take advantage of Unicode support in Outlook.

Outlook can run in one of two mailbox modes on Microsoft Exchange Server: Unicode or non-Unicode. Unicode mode is recommended and is the default mode if the configurations of your profile, Exchange server, and administrator settings allow it. The mode is automatically determined by Outlook based on these settings and cannot be changed manually.

Running Outlook in Unicode mode will enable you to work with messages and items that are composed in different languages. If Outlook is running in non-Unicode mode on the Exchange server and if you would like to switch to Unicode mode, contact your administrator.

Note  Earlier versions of Outlook provided support for multilingual Unicode data in the body of Outlook items. However, Outlook data, such as the To and Subject lines of messages and the ContactName and BusinessTelephoneNumber properties of contact items, were limited to characters defined by your system code page. This limitation is no longer the case in Office Outlook 2003, provided Outlook is running in Unicode mode on the Exchange server.

POP3 (POP3: A common protocol that is used to retrieve e-mail messages from an Internet e-mail server.) accounts also have the capability to support multilingual Unicode data in Office Outlook 2003, provided the items are delivered to a Personal Folders file (.pst) (Personal Folders file (.pst): Data file that stores your messages and other items on your computer. You can assign a .pst file to be the default delivery location for e-mail messages. You can use a .pst to organize and back up items for safekeeping.) that can support multilingual Unicode data. By default, new POP3 profiles that deliver to a new .pst file created in Office Outlook 2003 support multilingual Unicode data.

Note  Other accounts such as IMAP (IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol): Unlike Internet e-mail protocols such as POP3, IMAP creates folders on a server to store/organize messages for retrieval by other computers. You can read message headers only and select which messages to download.) and HTTP (HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): Protocol that is used when you access Web pages from the Internet. Outlook uses HTTP as an e-mail protocol.) do not support Unicode.

Anyone here knows how to enable Unicode for Outlook? If we find that, then we may also find a solution for other multibyte language characters.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

(Actually I'm not sure if the multibyte characters turn into question marks on the Exchange Server, before it even reaches Outlook).

Nope it is not the Exchange Server; our Japanese users who use the Japanese version of Outlook receive their emails intact. So it really is only a question of running English Outlook in 'Unicode mode'. Here is an article on this http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistan...0269311033.aspx

[tschless]

Thank you all for the feedback. I am using Outlook 2003 and will try to create a new pst and reinstall the POP3 accounts to have Outlook 2003 create the Unicode setup it needs to display the characters. I'll let you know how it works out.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I am still waiting for a reply from our mail admin regarding the 'Unicode mode' described in the MSKB article in my last post. I will also post back when I get any info.

[tschless]

I was able to configure Outlook 2003 to display asian characters in the To, CC, subject, etc. boxes by creating a new .pst file in Outlook 2003 and importing all my contents of the 'old' .pst file into this new pst file to get all my data. When I installed Outlook 2003 I had renamed the 'new' outlook.pst file and copied over my 'old' Outlook 2002 outlook.pst file. However, only .pst files created by Outlook 2003 will handle Unicode characters and display them properly everywhere.

Secondly I configured XP SP2 Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/ Advanced/ "select a language to match the language version of the non-unicode programs....." to Chinese (PRC). Now Acrobat and WinZip properly display the file names in Chinese and Japanese and no longer freeze when executing these files.

I have not found any problems with this setting to Chinese (PRC). It seems that all asian languages can be displayed. I expect that other non-unicode programs will be able to use the asian characters as well with this setting.

For completeness I need to mention that I have also set: Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Languages/text services and input languages/ to include Japanese, chinese(PRC), Korean and Chinese (Taiwan) AND .../Languages/Supplemental Language Support/checked "install files for complex script..." AND checked "install files for East Asian Languages

Let me know if you find any problems. Thanks all, you helped me on the way and I was able to finish it.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Additional info - it may help someone, some day.

I have finally been able to change my Outlook client, connected to an Exchange Server 2003, to Unicode mode. This is what I've done

• start gpedit.msc
  
• expand User Configuration, right-click Administrative Templates, and then click Add/Remove Templates
  
• click Add, click OUTLK11.ADM, click Open, and then click Close
  
• under User Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, expand Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, and then click Exchange Settings
  
• in the right pane, double-click Exchange Unicode Mode - Ignore OST Format, then set it to Enabled
  
• same for Exchange Unicode Mode - Ignore Archive Format
  

After a reboot, Outlook will start in Unicode mode, and correctly display Subject lines and other email headers in any languages.

P.S. Above may require to install the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions Resource Kit first.

[tschless]

To my #p post of Feb 16 I have to make one correction.

"Secondly I configured XP SP2 Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/ Advanced/ "select a language to match the language version of the non-unicode programs....." to Chinese (PRC)."

This will only display Chinese (PRC) for each other language you will need to change to the appropiate language and reboot.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Now that attachments are working again, here's a screen shot of the Group Policy Editor with the Outlook 2003 settings.