Unwanted characters in emails

Altho my email is clean when it leaves Mail, sometimes they are received by Windows users with characters inserted here and there throughout: question marks, or question marks in black diamonds, or B, or Â. Can anybody tell me what to do to prevent this? It can be quite confusing wading through text with these insertions.

Outlook on Windows (other e-mail client possibly as well) is unable to interpret Unicode characters in HTML e-mails.
In Tiger Mail sends out formatted e-mails as HTML with UTF-8 as the character set. This causes the trouble in Outlook.
To avoid this issue send your e-mails as plain text - either set this as your Preference or change it using the Format menu when needed.
Hope this helps,
Norbert

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Thunderbird keeps adding extra unwanted characters into messages - how can I stop or prevent this.

Thunderbird keeps putting extra unwanted characters into emails, eg hereâ€™s the articleÂ. These extra characters roughly coincide with punctuation marks.
First raised this a couple of weeks back but so far no-one has come back.

You're getting these in messages while you're composing? This issue usually comes up with ''incoming'' mail and is also often seen in browsers. They can be connected with users who use non-standard fonts such as wingdings in their email.
None of the things you say you have tried are likely to affect it. Gnospen is thinking of the '''View|Character Encoding''' setting; mine is set to Unicode and I don't understand why anyone would choose one of the regional variants when Unicode is available.
You could look at '''[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Menu_differences_in_Windows,_Linux,_and_Mac Tools|Options]'''|Display|Formatting→Advanced and check if you have selected mainstream fonts for your email contents.

Removing unwanted characters from imported string

Hello,
I have a tab-delimited .txt file which I have to import into Indesign for further processing.
The file is composed by a 3 columns header row at the beginning (Code, Description, price) followed by a series of 3 columns data rows.
The problem is that sometimes, depending on the way the txt/csv file has been created, may include unwanted characters (such as spaces, double spaces, etc.).
Is there a way to "clean" the imported strings from these unwanted characters?
This is my starting code:
function processImportedTxt(){
    //Open .csv file
    var csvFile = File.openDialog("Open file .csv","tab-delimited(*.csv):*.csv;");
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    if (datafile.exists){
        datafile.open('r');
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   while(!datafile.eof){//read every row till the end of file
        csvData.push(datafile.readln());
    datafile.close();
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        var myRowData = csvData[a];//row of data
        var mySplitData = myRowData.toString().split("\t");//divide columns
        var myRowCode = mySplitData[0];
        var myRowDesc = mySplitData[1];
        var myRowPrice = mySplitData[2];
        // Here goes code for cleaning strings from unwanted characters
processImportedTxt();
Any help would be much appreciated
Thanks in advance

Hi,
If you want to safe 1-space occurences just a small correction:
i.e.:
var myRowCode = mySplitData[0].replace(/\s\s+/g,'');
Jarek

Check a string in bash for unwanted characters

Hello,
I'm trying to do a bash script that checks a variable against a list of unwanted characters, e.g. to parse a file name.
This doesn't really sound like a difficult task, but for some reason, whatever I've tried so far does not work, including my last attempt, shown below. Perhaps I'm doing something silly here - and I'm getting tired of it. What would be the best way for instance to parse a file name for invalid characters, or to accomplish or fix the below?
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Enter a filename: " fname
invalid_chars=", . ! @ # \$ % ^ & \* ( ) + = ? { } [ ] | ~"
i=0
while (( i <= ${#fname} )); do
   char=${fname:$i:1}
   for char in `echo $invalid_chars`; do
     echo "$char"
   done
   (( i += 1 ))
doneThanks.

Meanwhile I figured out the mistake I made in the for loop. The below finally works catching the list of characters. It won't catch * and ? though. I wonder if there wasn't an easier way to do it, beside using "grep".
#!/bin/bash
f_varcheck()
ifs_orig=$IFS
count=0
score=0
while (( count <= ${#1} )); do
    char=${1:$count:1}
    if [ "$score" = "0" ]; then
      wanted_char='~,!,@,#,$,%,^,&,(,),+,`,='
      IFS=$','
      for item in `echo "$wanted_char"`; do
        [ "$item" = "$char" ] && score=1
      done
    fi
    if [ "$score" = "0" ]; then
      wanted_char='{,},|,[,],\,:,",;,<,>,., ,/,'
      IFS=$','
      for item in `echo "$wanted_char"`; do
        [ "$item" = "$char" ] && score=1
      done
    fi
    if [ "$score" = "0" ]; then
      wanted_char=','
      IFS=$' '
      for item in `echo "$wanted_char"`; do
        [ "$item" = "$char" ] && score=1
      done
    fi
if [ "$score" = "0" ]; then
    (( count += 1 ))
else
    break
fi
done
IFS=$ifs_orig
[ "$score" = "1" ] && return 1 || return 0
read -p "Enter a filename: " fname
if ! f_varcheck "$fname"; then
   echo "Invalid character \`$char\` found."
else
   echo "Input is ok."
fi
{code}
Edited by: Dude on Feb 11, 2012 8:51 AM

Removing unwanted characters..

Hey guys,
I'm back for help again. Unfortunately my brain isn't creative enough, so please help! :-)
Ok, I need to remove unwanted characters from a file...the problem is that the characters look like this:
in any text editor. I'm using JEdit, and it's ISO-8859-1 encoding. The text was initally from a html file, and i think that most of the html is displayed well as text in JEdit. But these squares, which are bits of info that I don't need, are making it a little trick to do my extraction.
Ex: the word I want to extract is "trouble". But in the file, it looks like this:
troble....
Anyone know how to get rid of all that stuff???
Thanks in advance.
...DJVege...

you could try to set a filter on the characters you accept. Process each character and only accept those that fall into some ASCII boundary. If you accept ASCII characters that have values between 33-255, most blocks should be eliminated.
Something like this should help:
import java.io.*;
public class Example {
     protected static final int MIN_ASCII = 33;
     protected static final int MAX_ASCII = 255;
     public Example(String file) throws IOException {
          BufferedReader b = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(file)));
          PrintStream p = new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream(file+"_fix.txt"));
          String s = "";
          int j;
          while ((s = b.readLine()) != null) {
               for (j = 0;j < s.length();j++) {
                    if (valid(s.charAt(j))) {
                         p.print(s.charAt(j));
               p.println();
          b.close();
          p.close();
     protected boolean valid(char c) {
          int asc = (int)c;
          // allow for tabs and spaces
          if (asc == 9 || asc == 32) {
               return true;
          return (asc >= MIN_ASCII && asc <= MAX_ASCII);
     public static void main(String args[]) {
          if (args.length > 0) {
               try {
                    new Example(args[0]);
               catch (IOException e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
}useage: java Example <file>
of course, something like this will probably only work on "english" files as I dont have an understanding on how foreign characters are encoded..
if this doesnt solve your problem, you might want to adjust the range to 33-127, which will eliminate all "block" characters and all "special formatted" characters (i.e. accented characters, currency signs, etc.)
see http://asciitable.com/ for more information on ASCII characters

How can i see hidden characters for email passwords?

how can I see hidden characters for email passwords?

You can't. Under what circumstances are you hoping to see the characters? When you type them in? You do see each character as you type it in for a fraction of a second. But you can't see the whole thing.

Actively remove unwanted characters

Hi, I'm writing a function to actively remove unwanted characters from an input field. It will run every time a key press event occurs on the selected input fields. It is going to remove quotes and things like that. This is what I have so far..
void test(){
char unwantedCharSet[50]={"abcD"};
char tempString2[200];
int matchedCharIndex;
GetCtrlVal (panelHandle[MAIN], MAIN_STRING,tempString);
do{
RemoveSurroundingWhiteSpace (tempString);
matchedCharIndex = strcspn (tempString, unwantedCharSet);
if(matchedCharIndex==strlen(tempString)){
SetCtrlVal (panelHandle[MAIN], MAIN_STRING, tempString);
return;
else{
strncpy (tempString2, tempString, matchedCharIndex);
CopyString (tempString, matchedCharIndex, tempString,matchedCharIndex+1,(strlen(tempString)-matchedCharIndex));
strcat (tempString2, tempString);
sprintf(tempString,"%s",tempString2);
} while(1);
return;
It is still glitchy. Does anyone have any advice to efficiently do this?
Thanks in advance!
Solved!
Go to Solution.

This was my solution, although, it takes a long time to perform. Does anyone have any tips on a better (faster/cleaner) approach?
/*=====================================================================*/
// TEST
/*=====================================================================*/
void test(){
GetCtrlVal(panelHandle[MAIN],MAIN_STRING,tempString);
SetCtrlVal(panelHandle[MAIN],MAIN_STRING,filter(tempString,unwantedCharSet));
return;
/*=====================================================================*/
// FILTER
/*=====================================================================*/
char *filter(char *inputString,char *filterString){
int ptr=0,matchedCharIndex=0;
char outputString[100];
do{
matchedCharIndex = strcspn (inputString,filterString);
if(matchedCharIndex!=strlen(tempString)){
strcpy (outputString, inputString);
for(ptr=matchedCharIndex;ptr<=strlen(inputString);ptr++){
outputString[ptr]=inputString[ptr+1];
DebugPrintf("%s\n",outputString);
if(outputString[ptr]=='\n'||outputString[ptr]=='\0')
break;
strcpy(inputString,outputString);
else
return inputString;
} while(1);
return inputString;

Problems with danish characters in email

Hi,
I have created a mailform with danish characters. I have tried to use the following configuration:
charset=iso-8859-1
But when i save the mailform, CRM transforms it to:
charset=utf-8
And before the header line it inserts:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
This is a problem because some of oure customers email clients, can't read this and garbles the danish special characters. The result is non readable emails.
How do i fix this?
Kind Regards
Michael
Edited by: Michael Knudsen on Oct 16, 2008 11:21 AM

Hi Michael,
pls create an OSS for this to allow SAP development to check this for you.
regards
martin

Fonts displaying in strange characters in Email and Web Browser

Myself and my creative director (on two different computers) are seeing strange characters in our email clients and web browser. He uses Entourage for Email and I use Thunderbird. We both use Firefox for a web browser.
This does not happen with every email or with every web page, what could it be?
View a screenshot here:
ftp://www.hanlonftp.com/upload/fontProblem.jpg

Clear out the font cache files from the hard drive with Font Finagler. Also, if you have the fonts Helvetica Fractions or Times Phonetic on the drive, delete them.

Strange characters in email Subject field

I don't quite know where to post this one, but since I'm always programming only .jsps and servlets I hope someone will answer this here.
Accented characters in subject field of our emails produced by our programmes are being replaced by nonsense like the following:
=?ANSI_X3.4-1968?Q?
In the body of the email I can just replace accented characters with html equivalents, no problem, but not in the subject field.
Is there a way round this, like setting the character encoding somewhere or whatever? I use the javamail API to produce these emails - is there anything in the API for this?
Any help would be much appreciated.

I think e-mail only allows only ASCII characters in certain fields? I think you'd have to read the email RFC to find out the details of that.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
That's a start, but there are certain extensions to that, I think, that might atler things... Otherwise, you'd have to check thru the JavaMail API docs and see if there's an encoding setting somewhere.

Accented characters in email fields

I'm using this script to have email sent to me through a mail form:
<?php
// initialize variables for To and Subject fields
$to = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'Een testmail';
$from = $_POST["from"];
$email = $_POST["email"];
$comments = $_POST["comments"];
// build message body from variables received in the POST array
$message = "Van: $from \n\n";
$message .= "Email: $email \n\n";
$message .= "Bericht: $comments";
$message = stripslashes($message);
//convert flash line breaks
$message= str_replace("\r", "\n", $message);
$message=nl2br($message);
// add additional email headers for more user-friendly reply
$additionalHeaders = "From: $from <".$email.">\r\n";
$additionalHeaders .= "Reply-To: ".$email."\r\n";
$additionalHeaders .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$additionalHeaders .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n";
// send email message
$OK = mail($to, $subject, $message, $additionalHeaders);
// let Flash know what the result was
if ($OK) {
echo 'sent=OK';
else {
echo 'sent=failed&reason='. urlencode('Er is een probleem met de server. Probeer het later nog eens.');
?>
The problem is that I can't get accented characters appear into the From: cc: bcc: fields. For example, when I fill the From field with 'René' it appears as 'RenX' in the From: field. I've set everything to utf-8 but that doesn't seem to matter. When I receive an html text mail, the From: fields displays accented characters as strange codes, like RenA@ or RenX for René.
In the message text itself it varies: it either displays René when the mail is viewed as plain text mail, or RenA@ when the mail is views as html text. How can I get accented characters appear inside email fields too? And also in the body text when the email is viewed as html text?

It comes down to this. Since flash outputs in utf-8 I used utf-8 in here too. But narrowing it down to the most basic part:
<?php
$headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset= UTF-8\r\n";
$headers .= "From: René <[email protected]>\r\n";
$OK = mail('[email protected]', 'A question', 'René is my name', $headers);
if ($OK) {
echo 'sent=OK';
else {
echo 'sent=failed&reason='. urlencode('There is a problem with the server. Try again later.');
?>
When I view this through webmail I get to see RenX in the From field where it should be René. Changing charset to ISO8859-1 won't work either. I get RenX in the From field and RenA@ in the message part. And when I switch in webmail from text/html to text/plain it says Ren? in the message part.
How can I make it display René in all headers and message? Both in html mode and in plain text mode?

Strange characters in email messages

my email messages have text characters that I cannot read. This is what the messages look like:
Xä•Aä[[å{A•b@{~ and so on.
I'm sure it is a simple key punch solution or mail preferences setting but I have tried everything I can think of. If anyone can solve this problem quickly for me I would appreciate it greatly.

I think e-mail only allows only ASCII characters in certain fields? I think you'd have to read the email RFC to find out the details of that.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
That's a start, but there are certain extensions to that, I think, that might atler things... Otherwise, you'd have to check thru the JavaMail API docs and see if there's an encoding setting somewhere.

Cyrillic characters in email from discussions

Hi.
I'm subscribed to a particular topic, and I've been receiving the usual emails for each new posting. These have been fine except for this one: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9346909#9346909
The email didn't show the message in the usual font, but instead displayed it in Cyrillic (Russian) characters, yet as you can see, the posting is in perfectly normal English.
Anyone know what's going on?
Bob

The OP apologizes for his poor English, perhaps the original post was made in a language that uses Cyrillic characters and then translated or revised?

Special Characters within Email Addresses

I am trying to send e-mails via JavaMail that contain French characters. I have no problem setting the subject and body as ISO-8859-1 compliant.
However, there are several e-mails in the distribution list that contain special characters within the actual email (i.e. test@t�st.com). When I try to send it, I get the following error:
javax.mail.SendFailedException: Sending failed;
nested exception is:
        javax.mail.SendFailedException: Message partially delivered;
nested exception is:
        javax.mail.SendFailedException: 501 badly formatted RCPT TO user <test@9
nested exception is:
        javax.mail.SendFailedException: 501 badly formatted RCPT TO user <test@9
        at javax.mail.Transport.send0(Transport.java:219)Are there ways around this or could this be a limitation of my smtp server? If you anyone can share some info or point me towards the appropriate resources, it will be very much appreciated.
Thanks.

I'm pretty sure you can't put special characters in a domain name (i.e t�st.com). However, that begs the question of whether it is valid in the user name portion of the email address (i.e. t�[email protected]). I don't know for sure.
Maybe URL encoding or Mime encoding may do something, but this is just a guess.

Scandinavian characters in email attachment

Hi,
I have a send-email process, where I add an attachment. The attachment is a csv file, which is converted to blob. The problem is that when the email is sent and the file is opened in excel, the scandinavian chars are not shown correctly. In notepad they are correct. How could I fix this ?
Tiina

Hello Tiina,
If you can read characters fine in Notepad but not in MS Excel, the issue is in Excel. In this case, MS Excel is not able to detect "character encoding" and it's using it's own default charset encoding to display data.
See encoding - Microsoft Excel mangles Diacritics in .csv files? - Stack Overflow
For this, you just need to add BOM (Byte Order Mark) at beginning of file. For sample PL/SQL refer PL/SQL Web Toolkit to create downloadable UTF-8 with BOM document with Chinese content Way&#039;s Blog
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Hari

Unwanted characters in emails

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