Can't read Japanese emails

[jingai]

I just got a new laptop with Win XP Home and Office 2003. It's been working pretty well so far, but I'm unable to read plain-text Japanese emails in Outlook 2003.
I did install the East Asian languages files and the IME works fine, but when I try to read Japanese plain-text emails, I can read the English ok, but the Japanese is just ASCII garbage. If I click to open the email and change the encoding to JIS, Shift-JIS, or unicode, I still have ASCII garbage. The same email account/server combination worked just peachy under Outlook 2000.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

Also, is there a way to get ordinary Japanese file names to show up ok under Windows explorer? Right now they are ascii garbage, too.

[Andocrates]

Try:

Japanese EUC, or else,
auto select (I'm sure you tried that) or
Japanese auto-select.

If that doesn't work try extending Japanese support to all programs through Control panel

Control Panel
Date Time and Language options
Regional and languages (it's at the bottom of the Date Time and Language options page)
Click Languages tab
Click Details
Click Advanced
Extend support for advanced text services.

If that doesn't work update your Outlook (via patches)

[Ptyx]

Japanese Input Tutorial
Hope it can help.

[jingai]

[Big Booger]

Control Panel
Date Time and Language options
Regional and languages (it's at the bottom of the Date Time and Language options page)
CLICK ADVANCED THERE.. NOT THE LANGUAGE TAB.

Then under 'Language for Non-Unicode Programs' select Japanese (also at the bottom you might want to check the box to apply that setting to all users and accounts). Hit apply then restart your computer.

I have no problem reading plain text in Japanese in Outlook 2003. Though this symbol sometimes comes up as the YEN symbol for some strange reason.

[jingai]

Hi Booger,
Just tried your suggestion as well- no noticable change I'm afraid.

Outlook 2003 seems to work fine with HTML emails and plain-text where the encoding is specified, but not on plain-vanilla dumb plain-text. I got an email from a friend via hotmail which was unreadable and the header says: Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
The next day I got another email from her VIA hotmail, but this one is readable: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-2022-jp; format=flowed

In Outlook 2000 on Win2000, you could just manually change the encoding on these emails, but this isn't working on 2003.

Are you all sure you can read ALL Japanese emails? Want me to send you one to test? This is important to me because all the forms on my website don't specify the characterset, so all those emails are now unreadable on the new computer.

Thanks for your advice!

[Big Booger]

yeah send me one..

bigbooger at techzonez dot com
:P

[devicenull]

odd, i can magically read all japanese emails, as well as subject lines without any problem at all... chinese at the same time as well... you must suck at the internet

[Big Booger]

odd, i can magically read all japanese emails, as well as subject lines without any problem at all... chinese at the same time as well... you must suck at the internet

Very helpful young grasshopper, very helpful indeed.

[Steve Bildermann]

In Outlook Express you can setup OE to switch all text being read to one standard font. Tool / Options / Read. Messing around with option will occasionally turn Japanese text to garbage.

Although I do not think Outlook has the same option no harm in having a look . Please check under Outlook / tools / options / mail format.

Might help.....

[jingai]

[devicenull]

ok, here is what i do... there is an addon out there for office that adds multi-lingual interface support. What I did to *fix* the issue with Japanese was to set my system to a Japanese default for both local and non-unicode. Then I installed office 2003 along with the addon. Set your encoding to "Japanese Auto-Select" and sit back and enjoy.

[Taro Toporific]

I did leave a copy of the messages on the server...

...this is an acceptable solution, but does anyone have an idea as to why Outlook Express works where Outlook fails?

I also leave a copy of the messages on the server, to do to 100% assure I can recover any moji bake message. As fas as to having "an idea as to why" all I can say is a paraphrase of St. Francis Xavier:" Double-byte Japanese is the Devil's Language."

[Big Booger]

[jingai]

Devicenull, what is the application you are talking about? Where can I get it and learn more about what it does?

Booger, did you get the plaintext email from my server?

Thanks for all your help, guys. I was pretty annoyed at Outlook '03 (still am) for being less functional than an older version

Just remember, "Even if you get angry you don't upset the table":
http://www.japannewbie.com/

[devicenull]

Microsoft MUI packs and the Proofing tool... you can buy them

[gpvillamil]

Actually, I was struggling with this as well, then I found this note from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324603

which fixed everything - though now sometimes the backslash appears as a yen symbol.

[Steve Bildermann]

Regrettably it's not a perfect fix. Yes, you get the outlook subject line problem fixed but by switching to Japanese language as the default several others issues pop up.

Perhaps you haven't modified your XP environment too much to notice so if it works for you, great.

In my case I have several preferences for fonts and sizes in menus, Icon display, in Explorer, in Outlook Express etc. By switching to Japanese as the default they all get screwed with and it's not possible to get them back to the way they were under regular XP.

An all unicode OS would solve these sort of problems but hey where would you find such a wonderful OS I ask you

...excuse me may I help you