Turn Off Regional Character Settings

When Outlook Web Access users use Internet Explorer 5 or later to send a message, recipients who have mail clients that are not Unicode Translation Format-8 (UTF-8) aware cannot view the message. A workaround for this problem is to disable regional characters.

Warning    Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

For information about how to edit the registry, view the "Add and Delete Information in the Registry" and "Edit Registry Data" Help topics in Regedt32.exe. Note that you should back up the registry before you edit it, and you should also update your Emergency Repair Disk (ERD).

To disable regional character settings:

1. Stop the MSExchangeIS service and the W3SVC service. On the Start menu, point to Program Files, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services. Right-click each service, click Stop, and then click OK.
2. On the Start menu, click Run, type Regedt32.exe, and then click OK.
3. In Registry Editor, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE on Local Machine, go to SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeWEB\OWA.
4. On the Edit menu, select Add Value.
5. In Add Value, type UseRegionalCharset as the value name, select REG_DWORD as the data type, and then click OK.
6. In DWORD Editor, type 0 in the Data field. To enable regional character settings, type 1.
7. Restart the MSExchangeIS service and the W3SVC service. . On the Start menu, point to Program Files, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services. Right-click each service, click Start, and then click OK.

Note   More information is available on the Microsoft Product Support Services Web site, in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q273615, “XWEB: Mail Clients That Are Not UTF-8 Aware Cannot View Messages Sent from Exchange 2000.”