XCON: Cyrillic Characters Not Rendered Correctly

ID: Q176235

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, versions 5.5, 5.0

SYMPTOMS

When Microsoft Exchange Server receives X.400-messages from another X.400 system that uses the ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5) character set for the message bodypart, Microsoft Exchange cannot render the Cyrillic characters correctly.

The characters in question are part of ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5) character set. Instead, Microsoft Exchange replaces the Cyrillic characters with placeholders. The replacement depends on the body-part chosen through the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program. Because the ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5) character set is not available, the chosen character set is different from the original Latin-5 character set. Additionally, the lack of ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5) within Microsoft Exchange means that it was not possible to send messages with Cyrillic characters to foreign X.400 systems that have been set up to use ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5).

CAUSE

The use of ISO 8859-5 (Latin-5) as X.400 bodypart for the X.400 message text is not implemented in Microsoft Exchange.

WORKAROUND

Aside of the hotfix described in this article, no workaround is available for Cyrillic characters if the communication takes place between Microsoft Exchange and foreign X.400 systems. If the communication takes place between different Microsoft Exchange Servers, the option Allow MS Exchange Contents can be used to prevent the conversion of messages from the internal content (MDBEF) to the X.400-format.

STATUS

Microsoft recognizes the increasing need to support the Latin-5 character set properly. This problem has been corrected in the latest U.S. Service Pack for Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.0. For information on obtaining the Service Pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K

MORE INFORMATION

Currently, in the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program on the X.400 Connector's Advanced property page, the drop down list X.400 Bodypart Used for Message Text does not expose the added character set. Therefore, the new functionality can only be activated using the Raw Properties of the affected X.400-connector. To be able to access the Raw properties of an Microsoft Exchange object you need to start the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program in Raw mode. This is accomplished by typing:

<drive:>\<path to the admin module>\admin -r

-or-

<drive:>\<path to the admin module>\admin /r

on the command line.

Once the Microsoft Exchange Administrator program is started in Raw mode, you can access the Raw properties of each object by highlighting the object and clicking Raw Properties on the File menu. The name of the Raw attribute which needs to be changed in this case is Translation-Table-Used and the appropriate value is 8.

Because the fix does not affect Subject-Lines and Display-Names, it is likely that in these lines Cyrillic characters will still be displayed as "???".

Additional query words:

Keywords : kbbug5.00 kbfix5.00.sp2 XCON exc5 exc55
Version : winnt:5.0,5.5
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug