Html emails – cannot receive

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We use Office 2003 (and Outlook 2003) and recently installed it on a new computer with Windows 7. Now, we have problems receiving emails from people who send email in HTML format. The emails come in looking like webpage source code. I thought there was a patch for Outlook 2003 for this (actually for Vista) but cannot find it. Anyone have ideas how we can resume receiving emails properly?

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We use Office 2003 (and Outlook 2003) and recently installed it on a new computer with Windows 7. Now, we have problems receiving emails from people who send email in HTML format. The emails come in looking like webpage source code. I thought there was a patch for Outlook 2003 for this (actually for Vista) but cannot find it. Anyone have ideas how we can resume receiving emails properly?

According to a long thread on MS discussion boards (Microsoft Office Outlook 2003[/url]), this breakdown in message decoding is caused by a problem with the “To” address of the incoming message, and was fixed (see Description of the Outlook 2003 hotfix package: April 22, 2008).

Usually, a hotfix makes its way into a service pack, so if your Office is fully patched up-to-date, you shouldn’t need to install older hotfixes. Researching by article numbers, it appears that there is a post-SP3 “rollup” that includes that hotfix: Description of the update for Outlook 2003: July 8, 2008.

This might not be an automatic update; I think I’ll check at the office whether I’ve installed that one.

Anyway, does it help?

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This might not be an automatic update; I think I’ll check at the office whether I’ve installed that one.

On my office system, Add/Remove programs does not show this update having been installed. However, apparently it was at some point, as I got this when I ran the download.

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Thanks a lot – I will check this out and see if I can apply it. I am always a little wary of updates/patches for old apps on a new OS – my fear is that it may want to make some OS adjustment based on what was the current OS when the app was current. Think will do a restore point first.

From what I read, this sounds like the solution.

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I did DL the hot fix and extracted it to a folder where it created a CAB folder and also a file – office2003-KB951982-GLB.exe ; then I ran that file and did not receive any further indication of success or failure. The Help|About menu shows SP3. Other than waiting until an appropriate email is received, how can I tell if the hot fix was successfully applied?

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Look in the %SystemRoot% (usually C:Windows) for $NTUninstall… directories. Look in the latest for a file ending with .inf, open it and look for details of your patch.
The directories are to allow uninstall of patches.

cheers, Paul

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I don’t think I installed it correctly and I cannot figure out what command to use to do the install. I tried

msiexec /p C:UsersDiepDownloadsOutlook hotfixCABOUTLOOK.msp but that is not the syntax MS is looking for as I receive a help screen telling me all the options for the command msiexec.

So how do I actually install this patch?

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The uninstall program should be in the directory with the other files. Look for spuninst.exe.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks Paul, I am trying to install the patch… not uninstall it. My understanding from Jeff was that the patch should fix the HTML problem. Thus far, I have not been able to actually install the patch.

Sorry if I was not clear about that.

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Thanks Paul, I am trying to install the patch… not uninstall it. My understanding from Jeff was that the patch should fix the HTML problem. Thus far, I have not been able to actually install the patch.

Sorry if I was not clear about that.

Why did you not just run the hotifx .exe file (office2003-KB953432-FullFile-ENU.exe) you downloaded? I’ve never had a problem just executing the downloaded hotfix file.

Joe

--Joe

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Why did you not just run the hotifx .exe file (office2003-KB953432-FullFile-ENU.exe) you downloaded? I’ve never had a problem just executing the downloaded hotfix file.

Joe

I did run that initially and it was a self extracting ZIP that created the CAB file and the other file I mentioned in an earlier post. I expected that when I ran that file, it would install inself but I never received any indication that it was installing or not so I presumed it did not install.

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Sorry, must have misread that one!

cheers, Paul

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