FIX: Garbled Characters in Outlook Calendar Appointments and Events (Solved)
This article contains instructions to fix the weird/unreadable and garbled characters in Outlook Calendar Meetings and Appointments.
A few days ago, one of my clients reported that recipients are seeing unreadable characters in the Outlook Calendar invitations sent to them (Meetings or Appointments) in Greek language, and after researching the issue, I realized that the same problem exists when replying to Outlook meetings from others.
In this article you will find instructions to resolve the following problems in Outlook:
- After creating and sending a meeting or appointment in Outlook Calendar in Greek language, the Greek text is decoded incorrectly inside the Body content (the recipient sees unreadable characters), while the Greek text is correctly recognized in the Subject and Location fields.
- After replying to a meeting request in Outlook, the message content is displayed in Chinese?/Asian? characters, making it unreadable by recipients.
How to FIX: Unreadable characters in Outlook calendar meeting events you create or respond to.
Method 1. Write Calendar Events in PLAIN TEXT format.
A temporarily solution for the unreadable Greek characters in calendar events created with Microsoft Outlook, is to create the appointment or meeting, in Plain Text format. To do that:
On any new event/meeting you create, change the Format Text to Plain Text before typing the details of the event and the content of the message.
Method 2. FIX Unreadable Characters in Outlook Meeting Request by Disabling iCalendar Format.
Another solution, to avoid sending unreadable characters in Outlook Calendar events you create, is to send the meeting requests without using the iCalendar format. To do that:
1. From File menu, click Options and then select Calendar on the left.
2. In 'Calendar options', uncheck the option When sending meeting requests outside of your organization, use the iCalendar format and click OK.
Method 3. Fix Unreadable Characters in Meeting Events by Disabling the "UTF-8 worldwide language support".
The final method to solve the problem of unreadable characters in Outlook meeting events you create or respond to, is to disable the option "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" in Region settings.
1a. Press Windows  + R keys to load the Run dialog box.
1b. Type control intl.cpl and press Enter to open the Region settings.
2. In Region settings window, select the Administrative tab and then click Change System Locale.
3. Uncheck the option Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support and click OK & OK to apply the change. Then restart the computer.
You 're done! Let me know if this guide has helped you by leaving your comment about your experience. Please like and share this guide to help others.
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