Mich said:
Since we have gone on to a server with Outlook 2003
Outlook is an e-mail client, not a server. So what "server" did you go
to?
some emails arrive with
the following "This is a multi-part message in MIME format" message at the
top of email. The contect of the email is interspersed with characters (=,
£, %) that make the email difficult to read. Also some attachement come over
as the following <META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.6000.16674"
name=3DGENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><FONT face=3DArial size=3D2><SPAN
class=3D671001810-31072008>hi = Jan,after a=20 thorough investigation by
Kendal's our electrical contractor = to make=20 safe any live cables from the
social work office going = into the=20 server room,before. It seems to be
totally random, I can receive emails from the same person and some come out
normal and some don't.
You are seeing the raw source of the e-mail. It also means the e-mail
is HTML-formatted (and maybe the sender is screwing up its structure).
By standard, an HTML-formatted e-mail should contain 2 parts: a
plain-text version of the message and an HTML coded version of the
message. That is so a recipient who uses an e-mail client that can't
handle HTML or is configured to read in plain-text format can view the
plain-text version of the message. An HTML-capable and HTML-enabled
e-mail client can show the HTML coded version of the message. Both
versions are within the same HTML-formatted e-mail (and why
HTML-formatted e-mails are twice the size of message).
You'll have to ask the sender just how they are sending that
HTML-formatted e-mail. My guess is that they are not using Outlook to
compose their e-mail but instead some other HTML editor or maybe sending
it to e-mail for some web page in their browser (because of the META tag
that you noted). Unless the sender properly constructs an
HTML-formatted e-mail, you will continue having problems when receiving
e-mails from this uneducated or lazy sender. The MIME part containing
the HTML coded version of their message is screwed up and they're
screwing it up. You could configure your e-mail client to read in
plain-text only mode to view the plain-text MIME part within their
message *if* they actually include it. Not all senders include both a
plain-text and HTML MIME part in their message when sending
HTML-formatted e-mails. Microsoft has long disobeyed RFC standards
regarding e-mails and, for example, will NOT include a plain-text MIME
part in e-mails sent out using their Hotmail service. Microsoft fixed
that a couple years ago, but they were screwing up HTML-formatted
e-mails for many years before that.
In the raw source for an HTML-formatted e-mail, you should see:
<header section>
<blank delimiter line>
--<MIME_ID>
Content-Type: text/plain; ...
<plain-text version of message>
--<MIME_ID>
Content-Type: text/html; ...
<HTML version of message>
--<MIME_ID>
My guess is that all you are getting is the HTML MIME type (i.e., no
plain-text MIME part is included) and the sender also screwed up the
MIME delimiter lines or the HTML code is invalid.
To make sure the problem isn't on your end with some 3rd party add-on
that you installed, start Outlook in its safe mode ("outlook.exe /safe")
and read their e-mail again.
