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This is a pretty easy problem to describe. Basically users who have just been upgraded to Outlook 2007 (yeah I know 2010 is out), are not receiving SOME emails (from outside our domain, ie hotmail, yahoo). Receiving is not the correct word, these emails come in, along with their attachments, subjects, to/from line, etc. But the body is blank. If the same user goes into their webmail, iphone, blackberry instead, they can read the message fine.

It's clear to me that something in Outlook 2007 is not generating the body correctly, so it just strips it. I just don't know WHY.

Our mail server was recently upgraded to Exchange 2010, users on 2010 running outlook 2003 are working fine, it's just the random emails for users using 2007.

I hope I made that clear enough, thank you for any future help guys.

EDIT: I don't see rft, but i swear I've seen it before. Here is the view source on a recent email.

 <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"><html><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.19120">
<DEFANGED_style_0 <="" style="">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
<p><DEFANGED_DIV><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Calibri">MS,</font></p><DEFANGED_DIV>
<p><DEFANGED_DIV><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Calibri">Could you tell me please what the 
legal descrip &amp; Topo Quad name is for this Monroe P.ID Site?</font></p><DEFANGED_DIV>
<p><DEFANGED_DIV><em><font color="#0000ff" size="2" face="Calibri">Thanks, Henry 
Roye</font></em></p><DEFANGED_DIV></body></html>
Funran
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4 Answers4

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Found that avg email scanner was removing content (body) of email but leaving the subject, sender etc. on a shared mailbox. Hope this helps for users who might come along this article.

Maddog
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  • so maddog, what was the resolution to the AVG issue? was it possible to restore the body of the emails that were already stripped? –  Nov 06 '12 at 16:14
  • We had the same problem as Maddog where an ancient version of AVG was modifying the body of the email via the AVG outlook plugin. The tricky part is that the email appears to be unmodified!!! And the iphone version was fine because activesync happily forwarded the message with all the body content (since AVG couldn't get it's fingers on it before activesyc delivered it)! –  Aug 22 '13 at 19:06
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Are you aware of KB2001972: Outlook 2007: Body of HTML e-mail messages are blank?

the-wabbit
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  • This seems to only regard websense users sending to outlook, which I don't think is my case. I'm having issues with all kinds of hosts. – Funran Aug 30 '11 at 20:14
  • The issue has been seen with WebSense, but might appear in other constellations as well. Can you check if you can see the message body using the "view in browser" feature and if so also check if the message body source contains the "" comment? – the-wabbit Sep 06 '11 at 14:42
  • I made an edit with the code I found in a stripped email. You can see the line defanged div though.....hmm – Funran Sep 06 '11 at 15:15
  • The message source looks freaked up beyond all repair. As the article states, there is probably something along the way breaking it. A possible reason for why you did not have problems reading the messages previously might be the new version of Outlook being more strict with the document structure. The unclosed tags seem problematic here, although I could verify that most browsers are forgiving enough to display it (mostly) correctly. – the-wabbit Nov 11 '11 at 21:10
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I once saw the same issue and unfortunately it's a bit anecdotal. We found that it was caused by the setting to use Word as an email editor. In our case it was the sender's machine that was generating the problem, but it may apply on the problem client too.

Is there any antivirus on the mail server or client that is scanning email that could cause any problems in the chain?

Peter Mellett
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  • I guess I'll look into how you set word as an email editor. Although would that effect how emails are rendered in outlook? Since emails come in perfect on cell phones and webmail, it must be something to do with how it processes the information (but only sometimes...i dont get it). We are piggybacked on another groups "inteceptor spam filter", we've been using it for like 8 years. It's never been a problem, although we were always using Exchange Server 2003 not 2010. The problem did start after the upgrade. – Funran Sep 21 '11 at 04:11
  • Another addition to this possible solution - Office 2007 does not let you change the editor from Word, so if this is the issue I won't be able to fix it this way. – Funran Sep 22 '11 at 18:53
  • Sorry I couldn't help, I didn't realise that option had been removed. Essentially the root cause was that something wasn't right about the generated HTML of the message and it was being stripped at some point in the chain (unfortunately we did not have server access or even a full map of the chain of firewalls and proxies to go by at the time) In our case, it was an external sender for the message so we weren't in control of the source message either. Do you have the option of sending the email in both HTML and Plain-Text to see if there are differences in delivery? – Peter Mellett Sep 22 '11 at 20:03
  • The problem is only with receiving, so there is a chance the problem is generated client side, but I'm leaning more towards our side stripping the HTML emails vs plain text for some reason. That's my theory at least. Obviously I've had this problem for a long time, it only seems to effect a few users but I'd still like to fix it if anyone has any suggestions. – Funran Nov 04 '11 at 13:34
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Your problem is a filter software that eliminates malicious code. But it is too greedy and eliminates even good things.

See this post for background information: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrclients/thread/ef7d900e-c51e-439b-a16c-2f2918f8d402

Disable your filter software.

mailq
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  • We have an spam filter that our email goes through called Epsion Interceptor, we've always used it, and it's not even ours. We're piggybacking onto another agency who is sharing it with us. I'll see what I can do, so this seems to be a work around, not a solution right? I mean, I'd consider turning it off, but there are people who will probably be against that move here at my office. That being said, is there nothing I can do to fix it, inside the interceptor, or otherwise? Thanks! – Funran Nov 09 '11 at 22:25
  • @Funran I can't get your point. You have two options. 1) Live with blank messages (as Outlook [better: Word]) can't interpret this corrupt mail. Or 2) Eliminate the program that corrupts your mail. Where should option 3) come from? – mailq Nov 09 '11 at 22:33
  • Unless the filter software was updated in a way to change how sensitive it is, why would it start now? We've been using it for years and it only started when we upgraded from 2003 to 2010 exchange. If exchange has nothing to do with it, could this really just be a coincidence? – Funran Nov 10 '11 at 14:41
  • @Funran Disable the filter! If the problem disappears then the filter **is** the problem. If not then it is something else. But how will you find out by not trying?! – mailq Nov 10 '11 at 16:51