some of emails received become plain text format
I start to use TB and can receive the emails okay but just some of the emails become text format. I am pretty sure these e-mails are sent with HTML format because other receivers received them okay with Outlook. I switch View->Message Body As->Original HTML, but it does not help. It is weird that one sender sends me 10 HTML emails and around 1 or 2 of them I received become Text and the others are still HTML. I spend a lot of time on it but can not figure it out... Please help.
All Replies (5)
What client is the sender using?
If s/he is using Thunderbird, it has the capability to send a message as plain text if there is no content that requires html markup. I guess other clients may be able to do this too.
Use ctrl+u to look at the source in one of these messages. You should be able to spot if it has any html markup. If it doesn't, then that is how Thunderbird received it; Thunderbird doesn't do any tidy up or redaction.
Yes!! I found the mails with the problem are all Outlook senders!! It is still strange that I use both TB and Outlook to receive the same email from them, TB shows Plain Text but Outlook shows Html. Even though I change TB View to Original Html, it still shows Text. Only 1 or 2 out of 10 emails from Outlook senders have this problem...
These are three examples that Outlook senders sent. I am sure they are originally Html because I also use Outlook to receieve them and shows Html well.
Examlpe 1: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_004C_01D33777.6ABACFA0" X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0 Thread-Index: AdM2khWDzi2ZLJbzSMuDzdU2t5psjAAR01owABNQKcA= Content-Language: zh-tw X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: 00000000C7BFB73298873F4F9463B8EB6209D4B984CAB700 This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
=_NextPart_000_004C_01D33777.6ABACFA0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="gb2312" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Example 2: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0123_01D353C7.9F387130" X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Content-Language: zh-tw X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: 00000000B7233B5A1FBB2C4097603509104A7788640D5000 This is a multipart message in MIME format.
=_NextPart_000_0123_01D353C7.9F387130
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="gb2312" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Example 3: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_00BA_01D353FC.65C04600" X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 15.0 Thread-Index: AQIEkNC6BNqLCTNZ2hqISaPF0Mj4XwGOpUvQopHPruA= Content-Language: zh-tw X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: 00000000E2333D238DA8D54F97E92BAA443CECDB84085E00 This is a multipart message in MIME format.
=_NextPart_000_00BA_01D353FC.65C04600
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="big5" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
I see two issues here:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: they are using a proprietary Microsoft encoding standard. This is Microsoft's way of punishing we who choose not to use their products.
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64: this is not a problem in itself but it means we can't see the code that makes up the messages. There are tools that can convert base64 to readable text. Base64 is often used to encode images, but some email services use it for html too. Base64 may be mandated here by the character set (gb2312) and language (zh-tw) being used.
My guess is that you're getting RTF, not HTML. And Thunderbird doesn't support RTF.
I checked with the senders. They are using HTML to send the emails...
Does it have something to do with the email server? We are working on switch it to other email server and see if it helps.
We have replaced another email server but found the problem is still there ... Please help.