embedded links messed up

[Scott]

re: Entourage 04

Following an order from an online merchant, I received a confirmation
email with my order information, including a link to check its status.

The email does not contain HTML, but it does have several links, one
being the link to the order status page in the format
http://
i.e., it's not enclosed in angle brackets.

I cannot click on the link--my browser isn't launched if I do. If I cut
and paste the link into the browser, the page is invalid (according to
the remote server, not Safari). However, if I View > Source, the link
changes slightly.

If I preview the message or open it in a separate window, the link ends
as follows:

/stat?[site name]?????????

where [site name] is the store name. The ending set of question marks
are (in the email) a series of Asian characters (Chinese or Japanese, I
don't know. I have my newsreader set to Western encoding, so they
couldn't be pasted in).

However, if I View > Source, it changes to this:

/stat?[site name]+[order number]+4480ce02eaab6cfdc7bd

[order number] is, of course, my order number. This link works just fine.

Why would Entourage change the characters?

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

It's possible that coincidentally the order number may have included
internet protocol code that indicates another character set, usually used
only in headers. Hard to know because you didn't include it.

But it's more likely that the message sent by an email program that can do
real hyperlinks (display text masking the real URL) in HTML, except that it
may not have been coded correctly.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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