HTML e-mail messages that have a charset META tag that differs from the MIME charset tag are garbled when they are processed through disclaimer rules in Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

Consider the following scenario in an Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) environment:

• You enable a transport rule to add disclaimers.
• The disclaimer test includes non-ASCII characters such as "G" and "S."
• Message are in HTML format and are encoded in Unicode.

In this scenario, HTML e-mail messages that have character encoding in the charset META tag that differs from the character encoding in the MIME part appear garbled when they are processed through a disclaimer rule.

Re-encoding occurs when you append the disclaimer. Exchange Server 2007 SP1 incorrectly encodes the META tag, and this results in the garbled message.

To resolve this problem, install Update Rollup 9 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1. For more information about Update Rollup 9 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1, see the following Exchange Help topic: For more information about how to obtain the latest Exchange service pack or update rollup, see the following Exchange Help topic:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

After you apply this fix, you have to set the DisableDetectEncodingFromMetaTag value to true in the EdgeTransport.exe.config file.

1. On an Exchange Server 2007 SP1-based server that is running the Hub Transport role, open Windows Explorer.
2. Locate the following folder:
   
   <drive> :\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Bin
3. Make a backup copy of the EdgeTransport.exe.config file by saving it as EdgeTransport.exe.config.old.
4. Open the EdgeTransport.exe.config file in Notepad and insert the following line between the <appsettings> segment and the </appsettings> segment:

   <add key="DisableDetectEncodingFromMetaTag" value="true" />

5. Save the changes, and then exit Notepad.
6. Restart the Exchange Transport service.