XCON: Extra Space Is Inserted in Long Subject Lines

If a message is sent from an Exchange Server client that uses the Exchange Transport as its primary method of delivery, and that message contains a subject field that is longer than 65 characters and contains least one space in those 65 characters, when the message is processed by the Internet Mail Service, a space may be added to the message in the 65th character, and another space is inserted every 73 characters after that space. Because of this, the subject field may contain words that are broken. For example, if you send a message with the following subject: The message is received at the destination with the following subject line: A space is added between the letter "d" and the letter "u" in the word "product." If this message is replied to repeatedly, the breaks become more numerous and more apparent because a reply is generally preceded by "Re:", which changes the location of the 65th character.

This issue occurs only when an e-mail message passes from the message transfer agent (MTA) to the Internet Mail Service for submittal to a remote Internet host. If the message is sent within a site, the MTA handles the message without any breaks in the subject field. If the message is sent directly through Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to the Internet Mail Service, the message also arrives without any breaks.

This issue occurs when the MTA passes the message to the Internet Mail Service. The MTA creates a file in the Exchsrvr\Imcdata\Out folder. The file is a text file that contains the e-mail message. Because of the way that the MTA creates this file (for the use of the Internet Mail Service), the subject field is automatically wrapped to a new line after the first 65 characters, and then wrapped again every 73 characters after that.

This issue does not occur if the Outlook client is running in Internet Mail Only (IMO) mode. For information about changing the mail services mode of your Outlook client, see the "About changing e-mail configurations" Outlook Help topic.