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View message source displays =09=09 preceding HTML code

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When I display the source of an email the HTML code is preceded by =09=09. Here is an example:

}=09@media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ =09=09.mcnTextContent=2C.mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ =09=09=09padding-right:18px !important; =09=09=09padding-left:18px !important; =09=09}

}=09@media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ =09=09.mcnImageCardLeftImageContent=2C.mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ =09=09=09padding-right:18px !important; =09=09=09padding-bottom:0 !important; =09=09=09padding-left:18px !important; =09=09}

When I view the source code in my other email client (Eudora) the extraneous characters are not displayed. Does anyone understand why this is occurring? Thanks for your assistance.

When I display the source of an email the HTML code is preceded by =09=09. Here is an example: }=09@media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ =09=09.mcnTextContent=2C.mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ =09=09=09padding-right:18px !important; =09=09=09padding-left:18px !important; =09=09} }=09@media only screen and (max-width: 480px){ =09=09.mcnImageCardLeftImageContent=2C.mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ =09=09=09padding-right:18px !important; =09=09=09padding-bottom:0 !important; =09=09=09padding-left:18px !important; =09=09} When I view the source code in my other email client (Eudora) the extraneous characters are not displayed. Does anyone understand why this is occurring? Thanks for your assistance.

All Replies (1)

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=09 is the hexadecimal ASCII code for "Tab". As in tab forward. There are many ASCII "characters" that are not characters that you can see. See: http://ascii.cl/

Tabs are generally ignored in HTML, so some e-mail programs may encode a tab this way to force it to "show" in the e-mail that gets sent. This is a quirk of whatever e-mail program was used to send the e-mail.

When viewing the source of the e-mail, Thunderbird will show these hex codes, rather than interpret them, showing exactly what is in the e-mail. Eudora apparently does interpret the codes, which can help with Tab characters, but will not necessarily be good for other non-printable ASCII characters (like delete or escape key presses).

When writing an e-mail in Thunderbird, it replaces a Tab with four spaces instead.