Windows LIve mail is not showing messages from email sent from MAC computers. Windows Live Mail sometimes doesn't show the entire email.

Hi Donna-chi,

We sincerely apologize for not being able to answer your concern in a timely manner. We are experiencing high contact volume at this time which has caused our delayed response.

I would like to ask additional details regarding your concern for us to investigate the issue.

> Have you tried to access your account using a web browser? does the same issue happen?
> Have you tried to access your account using another computer? does the same issue happen?
> Have you tried to access other accounts in Windows Live Mail? does the same issue happen?
> Did you encounter any error message? If yes, please provide the exact error message.

Your patience is highly appreciated and we will work toward fixing this situation for you.

Thanks!

I have exactly the same issue - emails from MACS do not display in Windows Live Mail
Alan D

This could be the long-standing problem with Type 1 (PostScript) fonts. [I think the root cause is an old licensing/copyright dispute between MS and Adobe/Monotype (?) about the Helvetica/Arial similarities, although I can't find any references ATM to back this up.]

If you have Type 1 versions of Helvetica (and perhaps Times and/or Courier) installed, Internet Explorer 9 won't render text styled to use those fonts. WLMail uses IE to display HTML markup. The solution is to uninstall the Type 1 fonts or otherwise hide them from Windows.

Check the message source (in WLMail, select a message in the folder pane and press Ctrl-F3). Look for font styles or tags calling for Helvetica (and variants lke Helvetica-Neue) ahead of other options like Arial and Sans Serif. 

OK .. checked the message source, all the emails were generated with Apple Mail. Yes, they have helvetica and times new roman. However, more interesting ...

 

mail I received back in Feb, Mar, April ... that I know I could read then, the messages are totally gone.

 

however, messages from these people that were in reply to an email I originally sent, are all still visiable.

 

And if this is also an problem with IE9 .. why can I see the messages in web-based mail?

I don't know how you'd go about it, but can you find some way to hide the Helvetica Type 1 fonts from Windows just to see whether that makes a difference? I've no idea how Extensis works, but basically you have to make sure that Windows can't find the .pfm and .pfb files involved - perhaps renaming them temporarily, then rebooting before reading these messages in WLMail.

Webmail uses different methods for rendering fonts, so that's no evidence that this isn't the problem.

The problem came to the surface with IE9. When did you upgrade? Is IE fully up to date (mine is at update 9.0.9 - KB2722913)? I remember similar cases from soon after the introduction of IE9 last year, but sadly all the documentation was ditched when these forums were set up earlier this year.

I am so fed up with Windows Live Mail and IE9 I could scream. I installed IE9 when it first came out. I had a problem with sites not recognizing that I had IE9 installed and that I needed to install it. Somehow I was able get a real person on the phone an he had me run two .bat files (he explained that something didn't register correctly). But IE9 has become slow and broken again. I do have version 9.0.9 as well.

At any rate, I had all my helvetica fonts (postscript type1) installed and activated when I first installed IE 9. And even though I was having problems with IE9 last year after first installing, I didn't have any problems with Windows Live Mail.

The problems with IE9 surfaced again back in May. The email problems started shortly thereafter.

I did have one font that I tried to install in April that gave me fits ... Veener .. .that was an open type font. If any font is involved, I would have to think it's that one.

But, in my heart, I think it's all related to IE9 and the only solution is to totally uninstall and reinstall both IE9 and Windows Live Mail.

And if that doesn't work ... I'll be a Chrome girl and find some other email program.

But thanks for tips. Unfortunatley, I have a complete Helevetica Neue set of fonts, plus some plain jane Helvetica fonts that I used heavily in my design work. I can't afford to change the file names on 70 fonts and take the chance of corrupting them. Can't afford to re-purchase them again.

I do recall some information I came across about postscript type 1 fonts possibly not being compatible with Win7 ... and is why I only purchase open type fonts and have been doing so for the past few years. But all my type 1 fonts have been working without problem in all my programs.

I wasn't suggesting you should do anything permanent with your Type 1 fonts - only to conduct a few tests to be sure that this was the cause of the problem.

I don't know why you didn't have problems with IE9 for more than a year. However, MS said in June last year that they didn't plan to fix this particular bug then but would consider fixing it in the future.

On a practical note, each of the Adobe CS programs has its own fonts folder and there is also a fonts folder in Common files > Adobe. Fonts that are only in these folders will be available to the Adobe programs but not to Windows in general. I don't know whether your fonts are actually present in the Windows Fonts folder, or whether you only have shortcuts there. If the latter, it wouldn't be too difficult to remove the shortcuts to the Type 1 fonts and put them in the program-specific fonts folder(s) instead.

At any rate, you're not alone.

 

Thank you so much, ¡Firedog.

I've had this problem (empty mails) myself for a long, long time and have not been able to find a solution, other than downgrading IE to version 8. This worked until I installed Windows 8, where it is no longer possible to use anything but IE10.
I sent a question to MS about it months ago but they couldn't help, until yesterday when they told me to check this thread.
Helvetica, type 1, that's it! Uninstall and every single mail now shows as expected.

The font files connected to Helvetica are

hv______.pfb och HV______.PFM
hvb_____.pfb och HVB_____.PFM
hvbo____.pfb och HVBO____.PFM
hvo_____.pfb och HVO_____.PFM

Not sure if all of them are involved, or if it is only one of them.
Other flavours of Helvetica (Condensed or Helvetica Neue for example) don't seem to affect mails, neither does TrueType.

Thank you once again for helping me finding a solution to this small but very irritating issue.

/Ronny Axelsson

Thanks for posting here. I hadn't heard of ay other complaints about this weird behaviour, so I assumed it had gone away with an update to IE9 or the introduction of IE10. It's interesting to learn that the problem is still there in WLMail, and that the workaround is still the same.