Outlook 2016 sent messages missing body text ? (using btinternet.com)

[#1]

I use Outlook 2016 (Win7 x64) to process e-mail messages (several e-mail accounts, all with btinternet.com addresses POP/SMTP), but for 2-3 months, on most occasions, Outlook's F9 send/receive process has been very slow to complete.

I now find that some messages are reaching the recipient incomplete, e.g., with the body missing (but with any attachments included).

Has anyone encountered the same problem and resolved it ?   TIA

[#2]

Supplementary details ... for example, the full body text for a recent sent message is visible in Outlook's 'sent items' folder, but the recipient tells me that the body text is missing when he views it (using BT webmail I believe), and his e-mailed reply to me concludes with:

"... On Friday, 26 April 2019, 15:15:09 BST, [me] <[me]@btinternet.com> wrote:"

That is, with my original body text missing.

[#3]

I don't know whether this will help but I always compose and read email as plain text. So, the body of some incoming emails is blank and I would have to view them in html mode to see the text

[#4]

Many thanks for the suggestion.

I've been using both text formats without any difficulty, but the earliest instance of the problem of missing body text is about 6 weeks ago:

"... On Thursday, 14 March 2019, 17:56:54 GMT, [me] <[me]@btinternet.com> wrote: "

[#5]

What immediately comes to mind is message formats, details of which I do not claim to understand.

Is the ‘blank’ content being seen by just one correspondent or a few?

Do you have an example of an email sent to more than one person and the receipts seeing / not seeing the body part?

For those not seeing the body part, what email client are they using? There is some possibility that the issue is at there end - sometimes emails received on my iPhone report that the body part is empty ... but looking at the same email on Outlook 2016 on the laptop displays the the context without issue.

[#6]

* Is the ‘blank’ content being seen by just one correspondent or a few?

- Only one correspondent

* Do you have an example of an email sent to more than one person and the receipts seeing / not seeing the body part?

- Sorry, no

* For those not seeing the body part, what email client are they using?

- BT webmail using Google Chrome browser (Win 7 ?)

My initial reaction was to suggest the recipient's e-mail system, too, but I'm not so sure ... the appreciable sluggishness in my Outlook 2016 when sending/receiving might be a related issue.

FYI - I suffered from a problematic Broadband connection for about 2 months (mid-Dec 2018 > mid-Feb 2019), which seemed to be beyond my control and ultimately disappeared (fingers crossed):

Fibre Broadband - Really slow connection last 2 days @ similar time ...
https://community.plus.net/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Really-slow-connection-last-2-days-similar-time-of-day...

[#7]

If you use AVG then this might be relevant

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2854787/email-message-body-is-blank-in-outlook

Dave

[#8]

Many thanks - I don't use AVG, but curiously I received a bodyless message yesterday from another source, but when I viewed it using BT webmail, the body content contained a suspicious URL.   So something's intervened (maybe VIPRE, which I use ?), but didn't flag that the content was being withheld.

[#9]

Hello @Davexxx,

Sorry to hear you are experiencing this issue. Can you try disabling VIPRE first and see if the issue persists. If so at that point can you try an alternative client?

[#10]

Sammy,

The suggestion is appreciated, but I'm reluctant to disable VIPRE as it blocked a trojan only a few days ago (JS:trojan.cryxos.2070).

However, after further inspection of the coded content of problematic messages, there appears to be a grotesque excess of Office program code/tags in (some) Outlook 2016 messages.

Some notes are below, for an e-mail message sent by myself 26 April, and the corresponding reply from the recipient 27 April, for which my original body text was 'missing'.

Dave.

[1] 26 April - My e-mail message sent from Outlook 2016:
ca 3,700 words of formatted message text + 100kb PDF attachment

Outlook saves the message as a 3.3 Mb .htm file, most of it:

 /* Style Definitions */
 p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
    {mso-style-unhide:no;
    mso-style-qformat:yes;
    mso-style-parent:"";
    margin:0cm;
    margin-bottom:.0001pt;
    mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
    font-size:11.0pt;
    font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
    mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
    mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
    mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
    {mso-style-noshow:yes;
    mso-style-priority:99;
    color:blue;
    text-decoration:underline;
    text-underline:single;}
etc. etc.

[2] 27 April - Reply to above message from e-mail recipient (using Chrome webmail?)
ca 70 words of message text, but omitting the body of my original message

Outlook saves the reply message as 3.6 Mb .htm file, most of it:

p.yiv7286869371msonormal0, li.yiv7286869371msonormal0, div.yiv7286869371msonormal0
    {mso-style-name:yiv7286869371msonormal0;
    mso-style-unhide:no;
    mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
    margin-right:0cm;
    mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
    margin-left:0cm;
    mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
    font-size:11.0pt;
    font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
    mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
    mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
    mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;}
etc. etc.

[#11]

Thanks for getting back to us @Davexxx

Is it possible for you to try an alternative client such as Thunderbird?

[#12]

Matthew - I've installed Thunderbird (60.6.1), and successfully imported the Outlook messages/settings, but I am not overly comfortable at the moment with a wholesale transfer from Outlook to Thunderbird.

FYI After some experimentation, copying an e-mail message body (with bold/italic/etc text) into Word 2016, making the content all Arial, and copying the body into a new e-mail message, it seems that message bloat arises from Outlook 2016's failure to manage/rationalise:

 /* Style Definitions */

In that a problematic ('bloated') e-mail message probably contains thousands of these:

p.yiv7286869371msonormal25121, li.yiv7286869371msonormal25121, div.yiv7286869371msonormal25121

This might have arisen whilst copying one message body into another in Outlook (the problematic messages contain several messages copied in sequence).

Thus the possibility is that Outlook 2016 is prone to mismanaging Style Definitions for rich text copy/paste, and that it might a be relatively new problem.

[#13]

So that I can check my Outlook e-mail settings - is there a PN table of current POP/IMAP settings for Outlook (2016) when using third party e-mail with Plusnet ? (btinternet.com in my case)   TIA

[#14]

Hi @Davexxx

Sorry, I'm afraid there isn't a table of settings for 3rd party email however there shouldn't be much in the way of a difference.

To be honest, 3rd party settings aren't something we support.

I'd probably take a look on some of the Microsoft forums out there for help with Outlook 2016.

[#15 · Accepted solution]

Matt - Many thanks; I've since discovered that the sluggish sending/receiving in Outlook is remedied by disabling CSS, below.

Not sure about the message bloat yet, but it might also fix that, too.

Dave.

Office 2016 File - Options

Mail: Outlook Options (then under Message format heading)

[Disable] Use cascading style sheet (CSS) for appearance of Messages