Sounds like the wrong Character encoding is being used. What character encoding do you have setup here: Tools > Options > Display >Formatting tab click on 'Advanced' button or Menu icon > Options > Options > Display >Formatting tab click on 'Advanced' button see my example image below I'm using Western(ISO-8859-1) But you could also try 'Unicode(UTF-8)' You could post an image showing what you have selected, much easier than typing it all out. Is this only a problem with mail in the Sent folder or also with mail in other folders? Select the email in the Sent folder click on 'other actions' > View source or View > message source or Ctrl + U What is in the source code for these lines: example: Content-Type: text/html; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit You could try selecting the email and then: View > Character encoding what is selected? Try another encoding, note it will only be temporary whilst viewing email.