Windows 7: WL Mail - apostrophe forces unicode encoding

Both of our laptops use Windows Live Mail on Windows 7 Home Premium. IN WLM, all encoding is set to default to Western European (ISO) and also to read all incoming messages in that same encoding.

When we create a new message in Rich Text Format and include a single apostrophe ('), then Save the email as a draft, it instantly changes encoding to Unicode (RTF-8). This can be seen on the title bar on the email. Remove the apostrophe and save again and it reverts to the default ISO encoding.

Anyone have an idea why this is happening? My wife is using Comic Sans MS font in 14 pt size and blue coloring, regular (meaning no bold or underline or italic). I'm using Calibri 12pt, regular, black. It happens on both machines.

Is this apostrophe somehow not being accepted as a legal ascii character? These are identical Dell Inspiron N0430 laptops, about a month old. Standard keyboard.



Thanks.

Now the same thing happens except when I remove the apostrophe and then save, the header still shows unicode. But if I then exit that draft and reopen it, it's ISO. Otherwise the problem remains the same.

I have the same problem.

Having had the similar problem with the apostrophe, I changed the font on live mail to times new roman and the encoding to unicode 8 and this solved the problem.
Windows 7Pro, 64 bit.

Would you like to share with us your recommended font settings:

READ FONTS:
Proportional = <Times New Roman only possible here.>
Fixed Width =
Font size =
Encoding = Latin, US, WE-ISO, or WE-Windows
Default Encoding =

READ INT'L SET...USE DEFAULT = checked or unchecked

SEND INT'L
Default encoding = <Unicode (UTF-8) only possible here.>
When replying... = checked or unchecked

SEND MAIL/NEWS PLAIN
Mime = checked or uuencode
Encode using = None, QP or 64
Allow 8-bit = checked or unchecked

SEND MAIL/NEWS HTML
Encode using = None, QP, or 64
Allow 8-bit = checked or unchecked

Based on the available choices in WLM, it sounds like you are saying the solution to the apostrophe problem is to read proportional fonts as Times New Roman and to send Int'l with Unicode (UTF-8). It sounds like one requirement applies to the recipient and the other to the sender. Correct?

I'm not claiming to have solved the problem, but the changes made have resulted, on my computer, in the absence of the annoying apostrophe substitute. I had never seen some of the options you mention - that is a measure of my lack of knowledge - there are some obvious errors.
READ FONTS -FW is courier new; size medium; WE-Windows; western european.

READ INT - checked.

SEND INT w.european,checked.

SEND MAIL - checked.none,unchecked.

SEND MAIL HTML - QP,unchecked

I had assumed thata a change in the encoding choice in the taskbar would be all that was required.
Thanks for your interest and hope it helps.

Thanks for all the input but my original post was that the apostrophe changes the encoding from Windows ISO to Unicode and we need it to stay Windows ISO. At this point we have given up on WLM because of this problem and are using Thunderbird. We would consider returning if there were an effective way to eliminate the problem. It's an involved story as to why we need to retain Windows ISO but that's non-negotiable. Thanks again for all the input. Maybe it will help solve someone else's problem.

I reviewed a rather lengthy explanation of this "apostrophe/smart-quotes" problem on a newsgroup. I think a solution that may work is to set the "Read" fonts to Western European (ISO) and set the "Send" fonts to Western European (Windows).

Also, for those of you using the latest version of WLM (2011), you may want to check out this registry key:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Compose\Preferences\PostEditor\Autoreplace

Thanks for the reply. I will give that a try soon as I can.

The insertion of bizarre figures, such as an a with a circumlex for apostrophes, corrects itself if 'encoding' is changed to Unicode (UTF 8). However, the default changes back immediately to Western European (Windows).

How can one set UTF 8 as a default?