Strange Characters in Outlook Sig File

[Dexter]

I have edited my Outlook 2000 signature file, to upate my job title. After I did so, every time I start a new message, the signature has the following at the top of it:




I tried deleting the sig completely and starting a new one, retyping from scratch, etc. Those funny little chars will not go away :mad:

Anyone...?

Cheers,

Dexter...

[CB]

Turn the screen upside down and shake it.

No wait... That's for Etch-a-sketch...

Hmm...

Reinstall Outlook?

If you can't figure it out, switch to Eudora lite :)

[Dexter]

Ya, I dug out the re-install disk today, will try that later.

Swicthing is not an option. I use the full version of Outlook including the Calendar, Task Scheduler, etc, and integrate that with my PDA.

Cheers,

Dexter...

[TheLostSwede]

Dexter,

Those are ascii codes right? What happens if you start a text-only message compared to html message? Your sig, did it include ANY signs at all on that line?

[profdlp]

...making the sig from scratch in the Outlook box, or writing it out elsewhere (in Word, for instance) and doing the copy-and-paste thing?

Also, you might have a corrupt font. try using the "repair fonts" feature in TweakUI.

[Dexter]

Mackanz said
Dexter,

Those are ascii codes right? What happens if you start a text-only message compared to html message? Your sig, did it include ANY signs at all on that line?

No, I even checked the HTML source of the sig file on disk. It's coming from Outlook somehow.

profdlp said
...making the sig from scratch in the Outlook box, or writing it out elsewhere (in Word, for instance) and doing the copy-and-paste thing?

Also, you might have a corrupt font. try using the "repair fonts" feature in TweakUI.

I tried it several ways:

- typing new sig
- copying an existing sig
- copying and pasting from an old e-mail
- editing an HTML file and importing that as a template

The characters show up whenever I do an e-mail in HTML or plain text mode, strangely, they do not show up if the e-mail is RTF formatted.

I don't have Tweak UI, may have to get it. I am going to try a re-install of Outlook first and see what happens. Thanks Guys.

[Dude]

I came across this as well, with the same strange characters you mentioned. End of the day I could not get TweakUI to fix this by repairing the font folder, and wasn't going to reinstall Outlook.

It seems to be a problem with message formats, in Outlook go to Tools > Options > Message Format, I changed this from HTML to Rich Text Format, and then clicked on Signatures, and though you can still see the ASCII characters there, if you click Edit you can delete them, and save the changes.

Now the next time you create a new message they will have disappeared (hopefully).

This is a work around I am using anyway, and it works.

If it doesn't for you after chaning to Rich Text, try create a new signature from Word, and save it as a RTF file, then select it as the template file, and test.

Good luck!

The Dude

[Dude]

Since Rich Text Format is propietary to Microsoft, other mail clients might not be able to view the content, I am switching to Plain Text format, you can then edit, and remove the special characters again.

[Whelkman]

For reference, the character sequence referenced is "ASCII-ized" hexadecimal code efbbbf, which is the UTF-8 byte order marker (BOM).