Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

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Peter P. Schifferli
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Joined: December 10th, 2004, 7:59 pm

Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by Peter P. Schifferli »

Whenever I send a message using TB, it now inserts two question marks after the period in each sentence as: .?? Only visible in the recipient's copy. What can I do to eliminate this behavior? TIA

Pete Schifferli
Win 8.1, Fx 77.0.1, Tb 68.8.1
morat
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by morat »

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in safe mode?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by tanstaafl »

If the problem also occurs in safe mode, does configuring Thunderbird to use Unicode UFT-8 as the text encoding for outgoing mail in tools -> options -> display -> formatting -> advanced help? That can workaround many character encoding issues.

What email provider are you using?

In tools -> options -> advanced -> general press the config editor button and then type mail.strictly_mime in the search field. What does it say that setting is set to? Changing that from false to true has solved similar problems when sending accented characters with yahoo/ymail/aol/verizon SMTP servers. Those SMTP servers claim they support 8BITMIME but actually just support UTF-8.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1435903
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 9&start=30 (long thread last year about double spaces changed to question marks in messages sent using yahoo accounts)
Peter P. Schifferli
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by Peter P. Schifferli »

Outgoing mail was already configured at UTF-8, problem persists. My eMail provider is AOL, thank you.

Pete
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by makaiguy »

tanstaafl wrote: In tools -> options -> advanced -> general press the config editor button and then type mail.strictly_mime in the search field. What does it say that setting is set to? Changing that from false to true has solved similar problems when sending accented characters with yahoo/ymail/aol/verizon SMTP servers.
Did you try this?
Doug Wilson
Win10 64bit: FF 115.0.02 64bit, TB 102.12.0 32-bit ║ Android 13/10: FF 115.2.0/115.0.1 ║ No TB for Android available, dammit!
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act39
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by act39 »

This is an ongoing topic in another thread:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3049463
:D :D
Peter P. Schifferli
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by Peter P. Schifferli »

makaiguy wrote:
tanstaafl wrote: In tools -> options -> advanced -> general press the config editor button and then type mail.strictly_mime in the search field. What does it say that setting is set to? Changing that from false to true has solved similar problems when sending accented characters with yahoo/ymail/aol/verizon SMTP servers.
Did you try this?
That seems to have done the trick! Thanks a million.

Pete
Win 8.1, Fx 77.0.1, Tb 68.8.1
RobertBrown
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by RobertBrown »

Hi,
Could someone clarify for me the instructions for changing the setting? I am asking for my father. I don't use Thunderbird myself, so I can't poke around to see what happens.

Is this like typing at a c: prompt?
After typing mail.strictly_mime in the search field,
(a) how do you know whether it is true or false?
(b) how do you change it?
Thanks for the help.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by tanstaafl »

Is this like typing at a c: prompt?

No. This is a scrollable window that lists all of the settings, which has a search field (that you can type in) at the top. The config editor uses four columns - preference name, status, type and value - to display the data. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/config-editor

If you search for mail.strictly_mime it will probably list mail.strictly_mime , mail.strictly_mime.parm_folding and mail.strictly_mime_headers, each on their own line. The mail.strictly_mime line should have mail.strictly_mime , default, boolean and false in one horizontal line. If you select that line it should highlight it in blue. Double click on the "false" in the value column and that will toggle the settings value. There is no "save" or "okay" button, any changes you make are automatically kept.

If you're worried about mistakes, backup the prefs.js file in the profile beforehand. "help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder" will launch windows explorer at the profile directory. The profile directory is used to store all of your data (its deliberately not stored the the applications installation directory to avoid losing data when uninstallling or upgrading).
RobertBrown
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by RobertBrown »

Thank you!
whatsitsgalore
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by whatsitsgalore »

Woo! Worked for me. Awesome advice, thanks.
whatsitsgalore
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by whatsitsgalore »

Uh-oh, I spoke too soon. Once I shut down the laptop and rebooted the next day, my email doesn't work at all. Can't receive, can't send. It says there's a problem with my password, which hardly makes sense. But I tried re-entering the password, and got the same result. Now what do I do?
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by tanstaafl »

What is the full text of the error message? (if it mentions your email address replace that part of the text with something generic)

What email provider are you using?

If its Gmail go to https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps and make certain that "Allow to let less secure apps access your Google account" is still enabled for Thunderbird.
whatsitsgalore
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by whatsitsgalore »

It says

Sending of password for user *******@********* did not succeed. Mail server pop.verizon.net responded: [SYS/TEMP] Server error - Please try again later.

Been 'trying again later' for hours and hours, and no go.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Thunderbird Inserting Question Marks In Text

Post by tanstaafl »

[SYS/TEMP] Server error means its Verizon's fault, there is a temporary problem with their server. Typically it might take a day or two for them to fix it. Webmail frequently works in the interim (since it doesn't rely upon the POP/IMAP and SMTP servers, it uses shared libraries instead) but any email client (not just Thunderbird) will fail.

However, my impression is that you should have migrated to either AOL or Yahoo mail. Verizon basically got out of the mail business and migrated all of their users to AOL or Yahoo mail servers.

See https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/email and https://www.verizonwireless.com/support ... ase-17067/
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