Alien Characters in Blank Email by Default
 

Hi,
I use Outlook 2003.
I have a signature, the usual, "This email is intended for the" - blah.
When I click on "new" email, I get an indent, a bit like Greek alphabet, in the left hand margin.

I can't turn it off and all the settings / preferences, i.e. formatting etc look standard. I now can't send emails for fear that people will think I'm an idiot who can't turn off a function.

Is it a bug or have I turned on a foreign language function?
I've spent over an hour trying to find the menu to turn it off... I'm self-employed and I'm nowhere without email.

Any help appreciated.

The characters look like a reversed P, with a double straight stroke. I can't copy them here, alas.

I suspect I have turned on a function as I went to hit "new" and hit CTRL or something, whereupon the screen added all these evil characters.

Every time I hit return, it adds a new one in the left margin.

Thanks in advance. :ugh:

Does it look like ¶ that?

That's a "paragraph" sign. I don't use Outlook, but in Word and that ilk it means you've turned on "show formatting characters".

Are you sure it actually appears in e-mails you send out? Some of those things only appear on your screen.

There is an article here which talks about something similar.

Open a new email in Outlook. Click the ¶ button if you have one on the standard toolbar to toggle the little devils on or off.

You can also click Tools > Options and in the View tab uncheck any and all that are in the Formatting Marks section when composing a new email. This menu is only available in the editing window.

Good Luck!

AFAIK,

Outlook uses Word (if available) as the text editor by default. It is possible that you have inadvertently toggled between Outlook's text editor and Word.

SD

Once I knew it was a "paragraph" icon, I was able to experiment by turning toolbars on and off.

Once I got a toolbar that showed the ¶, it wouldn't illuminate, so I couldn't switch it off.

However, once I highlighted everything in the email, it illuminated... I switched it off, and now I have my email back to normal again.

I really don't know where I'd be without the help I've received here.

Many thanks to all for the assistance :)