Why does Outlook convert an ellipsis to a question mark?

December 10, 2003 5:19 PM

Why does Outlook convert an ellipsis (...) to a question mark (?) ? This is happening on outgoing emails -- I only can tell it's happening when people reply to me and I see the email I sent in the body of their reply. It does not appear in the saved copy on my machine. I use Word as my email text editor.
posted by bowline to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Word is probably converting the ellipsis to a Windows codepage point instead of three separate periods. You can also see this when people edit a Web page using Word - most apostrophes turn into question marks.

I'm not sure if there's a way to stop Word doing this, other than the obvious choice of not using Word to edit e-mail.
posted by LukeyBoy at 5:23 PM on December 10, 2003

Best answer: AutoCorrect in Word changes three full stops to a special character. You can correct this by deleting the rule ("Tools", "AutoCorrect", select the appropriate rule and press the "Delete" button).

Better still, don't use Word as your e-mail editor ;-)
posted by dg at 5:31 PM on December 10, 2003

Heh, I wanted to be polite in my response, but I second dg's motion - don't use Word to edit your e-mail. If you need complex formatting, send a .doc file or a PDF or something. Unless there's something forcing you to use it.
posted by LukeyBoy at 5:34 PM on December 10, 2003

Response by poster: What can I say, I actually like autocorrect and instant spell-check.

But dg, your solution nailed it. Thanks very much.

Ask metafilter is a wonderful thing.
posted by bowline at 6:03 PM on December 10, 2003