Some Outlook text emails are blank in preview pane and when double clicked, but text shows up in Forward/Reply/Print

Question

Several users started having this issue in the past few days in their MS Outlook clieant: They receive an email which is plain text. In the body of the email, they only see the first line of text in the preview pane or when double clicking to open the full email. If the "Message Preview" is set to more than one line, they can see the 2nd or 3rd line in "Message Preview". If they "Forward" or "Reply" or "Print" the email, the dialog that pops up has all of the body text visible (where it was not in "preview pane" or the open message. OWA works fine. This is an issue with Outlook or Office or WIndows on the client device.
Exit/restart Outlook does not resolve Outlook w/out Add-ins does not resolve Outlook/safe does not resolve Log out/Log in does not resolve Shutdown reboot does not resolve Backed out recent MS KB5023696 and KB50222502, which are common on all users exhibiting the issue, did not resolve

Answer 1

I have the same problem and have explored it in depth. Plain text emails with carriage returns (ascii 13) without line feeds (ascii 10) are the trigger. Any carriage return becomes the beginning of the "hidden text" if there are no line feeds subsequently anywhere in the body.

Answer 2

Hi Faery, Thank you for your comments/questions: We have done a full office repair, with restart before and after, with no results. If I configure another email in the Outlook client on that machine, the same problem occurs. If I configure Outlook on another machine with those same emails, I do not have the problem. This appears to be related to configuration of Office/Outlook/Windows on the affected machines. It does occur on several machines. We have compared recent windows updates on some of the machines exhibiting behavior and found that all had recently updated with KB5023696 and KB5022502, whereas other machines that are working fine do not have those updates. Unfortunately, after uninstalling those updates, the problem persists. Thanks again for any other suggestions. Jeff

Answer 3

Update: Working with Microsoft Support, we looked in Outlook - File - Accounts - About Outlook, and observed that the client is installing updates on the "Current Channel". We switched the updates for one of affected computer from the "Current Channel" to the "Semi Enterprise Channel" via running the following in a CMD window as administrator: cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun OfficeC2RClient.exe /changesetting Channel="SemiAnnual" OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user After this change, the problem was resolved. This has proved that something in a recent Microsoft update is causing this issue. As a work around, we are going to do the above on all of our affected machines, and are going to hope that this issue gets fixed before the same updates come out in the SemiAnnual channel.

Answer 4

Hi @Jeff Hayward ，

Thanks for your feedback above which shared more information and glad to know that your issue is resolved now! Since our forum has the policy that The question author cannot accept their own answer. They can only accept answers by others, and according to the scenario introduced here: Answering your own questions on Microsoft Q&A

[Activating lagged copies - Summary]

Issue Symptom:
Outlook text emails are blank in preview pane or opening the message.

Solution:
As a workaround, switch the updates for affected computer from the "Current Channel" to the "Semi Enterprise Channel" via running the following in a CMD window as administrator: cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun OfficeC2RClient.exe /changesetting Channel="SemiAnnual" OfficeC2RClient.exe /update user

You could "Accept Answer" for this summary to close this thread, and your action would be helpful to other users who encounter the same issue and read this thread. Thanks for your understanding!

Answer 5

Hi Faery, I am not sure that this is really the solution to the problem. It is certainly a workaround, as it avoids the most recent MSO365 updates, which obviously have something changed that is causing this issue. I would prefer to keep this thread open. If others have the issue can cannot resolve, they could adopt the channel change as a workaround. However, they also might find the true cause and fix. Jeff