XFOR: 1251 Character Sets Not Preserved on Incoming IMS Messages

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.0

SYMPTOMS

Messages sent with Russian Athena containing the Windows-1251 character set, when downloaded via POP, contain body corruption.

CAUSE

During inbound processing, the Internet codepage property (PR_INTERNET_CPID) is being set only if the Iso codepage of the incoming character set is not a Windows codepage. Windows 1251, KOI8-R, and ISO- 8859-5 all fall in the 1251 character set group, so without the original codepage information, Exchange always maps it using the MIME database, which maps it to KOI8-R. Therefore, messages coming in using Windows-1251 and ISO-8859-5 are sent out as KOI8-R. Now the Internet codepage property ALWAYS is set on inbound, so Exchange knows which character set to use on outbound.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.0. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.0. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

Additional query words: Internet Mail Service

Keywords          : kbbug5.00 kbfix5.00.sp2 XFOR 
Version           : WinNT:5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbbug 

Last Reviewed: March 12, 1999