Recently installed software messing around with fonts?
I had run into the problem of the message text disappearing from e-mails (Outlook 2003, Windows 7 64 bit) when the user send it or close it (saving to Drafts folder). No, it isn't user error! No error messages appear, everything seems fine while user is writing and sending the message. However, when the user looks at the message in the Sent folder, most of the text of the message is gone. Only the first few lines are present. The recipients receive messages where only the first few lines are present. Any attachments are still attached, but text is missing - cutted off.
It has taking me several working days to track down the root cause of this frustrating behavior/error. The posts above describing font issues led me on the way. Thanks.
In my case, the
symtoms relates to the Outlook send, save and auto save functions:
- The behavior/error was related to one Outlook 2003 client for a single user. Other Outlook 2003 clients for the same user (same Exchange account) worked all right. The Outlook Web Access, Android phone client and iPad client also worked all right.
- There is no problem if the message are written and sent before auto save is done (e.g. within 5 minutes).
- Only the first auto save of the message works. All text added after the first auto save is not saved at following auto save operations. And much worse, not sent when sending the message!
- Manually saving the message has the same behavior as the auto save behavior described above.
- The cutting-off behavior of text can be bypassed by reapplying the font properties to the text. Eg select all text in the message and reapply font Arial (even though that's the default font). By doing this saving, auto saving and sending without loss of text is possible - until next save or auto save operation.
After a lot of detective work, I had in my case tracked down the root cause to Brother P-Touch Editor 4.2 (software for a label printer).
The problem disappeared by uninstalling Brother P-Touch Editor 4.2.
As I see it, is Brother P-Touch Editor 4.2 messing around with windows fonts and/or windows fonts security permissions.
If you got a similar problem then check if any software has been installed recently messing around with fonts.
OS: Windows 7 64 bit
Mail client: Outlook 2003 SP3
Outlook message format: HTML
Brother Product: P-Touch 2420PC
Brother Software: P-Touch Editor 4.2