Using Windows XP with Outlook Express I have not been able to access emails sent from any commercial enterprises such as Qantas, PC Authority, NRMA, and Princes Cruises to name a few. All that I see is the normal email header – From, Date, To, Subject and then there is nothing in the body of the message. Is this problem at my end or their end? Have I somehow unticked a critical box along the way? I have tried opening the Message Source for such problematic emails but that doesn’t produce anything which I can use.

It’s highly unlikely that the problem is on the sender’s end, since the same issue occurs across multiple senders (and it is probably a fair assumption that they are not intentionally sending you blank email messages!). That said, the senders may be sending emails in a particular format (or like) which are disagreeing with your email client causing nothing to appear. In particular, commercial enterprises often send email messages in HTML. This allows the message to look nicely formatted, as they are essentially sending you a stand-alone webpage in an email message (allowing the sender to take advantage of all the formatting available in HTML, such as different font sizes, including graphics, etc.). In contrast, plain-text emails which, as the name implies, can only include plain text with no special formatting.

However, as you are using Windows XP the Outlook Express email client should be more than capable of displaying HTML formatted email messages. Additionally, usually if an email client cannot display HTML it will gracefully degrade to a plain-text version of the email (which is usually included in such emails as a backup, in case the email client cannot read the formatted HTML email) or, in the absolute worst-case scenario, it will simply display the raw HTML code of the email (but at least in this situation you know the email was received, despite your email client being unable to properly read the message content). However, in your case it seems that nothing is being displayed.

Before going into more detailed troubleshooting steps there are some basic procedures we can try to resolve the problem. When researching your question I found other users who have experienced exactly the same problem. They managed to resolve the issue by re-registering the inetcomm.dll file with Windows. This file is the Microsoft Internet Messaging API and handles the internet email functionality of programs such as Outlook Express. If this file has become deregistered with Windows it can cause the functionality provided by the file to no longer be accessible, thus causing problems such as the one you are experiencing. Before going any further make sure that Outlook Express is closed. Then, to re-register the file, go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type the following (without the quotes): “regsvr32 inetcomm.dll”. Click OK to run the command. A message should appear confirming “DllRegisterServer in inetcomm.dll succeeded”. Click OK to dismiss the message. Open Outlook Express and check whether the problem has been fixed.

Should the problem continue it could be due to some corruption in your mail store files, which are essentially the database files which store all the email in Outlook Express. In the Outlook Express window, go to the “Tools” menu > “Options” and in the Options window that appears, click the “Maintenance” tab. Click the “Clean Up Now” button which will show a window asking which particular clean-up operation you would like to execute. Select “Compact” which will remove any deleted messages from the mail store files and also compact them, helping to ensure the integrity of the mail store files. Once this has finished restart Outlook Express and then check whether the message bodies are now displaying correctly.

If you are still out of luck some users have also reported that the problem can be caused by the path to the Windows temporary directories being incorrect. Windows stores the paths to temporary directories as “environment variables”. This means that any program can simply call an environment variable (such as %TEMP% or %TMP%) and that will automatically redirect to the relevant temporary directory – a bit like a shortcut. You can even try this yourself by typing %TEMP% or %TMP% in the “Start” menu > “Run” box and clicking OK. The temporary directory folder should open as a result. This has been done because the temporary directory on different computers may vary, so by referencing the environment variables, rather than hard-coding the path to the temporary directory within the program, allows flexibility for the operating system to dictate the temporary directory path and the program will follow. Returning to the question at hand, it seems that Outlook Express needs to store email data in the temporary directory in order to show the email body. Therefore, if the temporary directory is incorrect, and Outlook Express cannot write the relevant data, problems could arise.

To check the temporary directory environment variables, go to the “Start” menu > “Control Panel” and open the “System” control panel (you may need to first open the “Performance and Maintenance” category). In the System Properties window that appears, click the “Advanced” tab and the “Environment Variables” button at the bottom of the window. At the top section of the window under “User variables for …” there should be two entries: TEMP and TMP. Select each entry and click the “Edit” button. Verify that the variable values for both variables are: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp. If not, modify the values to be these exactly. Don’t be concerned that in the main Environment Variables window the values are different, that’s because Windows is changing the %USERPROFILE% variable to its actual value (such as C:\Documents and Settings\Test User). If the variable values are not correct then before making any modifications write down the current values, as they may have been changed to those values for a good reason! Once you have made note, change the values to %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp as per given above. Click OK to save and close the windows then restart Outlook Express and check whether the problem continues. If the problem does continue, and you changed the values, then you should change the variables back to their original values before proceeding further, so that everything is back to their original state.

If we reach this point then we will need to conduct a few more steps to narrow down the problem. While these procedures will not fix the problem it will inform our future research so that we can hopefully find a resolution. In your question you mentioned that during your own troubleshooting process you looked at the message source. This is a good step towards troubleshooting the problem, so I would like to revisit this procedure as I would be interested in narrowing down exactly what is displayed when you view the message source. In Outlook Express view the message source for an affected email by right-clicking on the message and selecting “Properties”. Within the window that appears, click the “Details” tab and then the “Message Source…” button. Most likely the Message Source window will open over the top of the properties window for the message, so move the window elsewhere so it doesn’t obscure the properties window (which we also want to be able to see). In the Message Source window the top portion of the source should be bolded. All of the message header (i.e. information such as the From, To, Subject, etc. which you described in your question) should correspond to the information in the “Internet heads for this message” portion of the message properties window. Underneath that header information in the Message Source window should be the message data itself. If there is information (you may not be able to interpret the information, as it will likely be HTML and CSS code) then the message is there, just Outlook Express is not displaying the message. On the other hand, if there is nothing else in the Message Source window except the bolded header information then the message is not there at all, so it’s no wonder that Outlook Express is not displaying the message! In either case, once you have finished this investigation close the Message Source window and click “Cancel” to close the message properties window.

At this point I will need the information which you have gathered during the message source investigation procedure in order to look at this problem further. If you could please send me the details you have found (i.e. whether the message source window displays the actual message or not) then we can take a further look at the problem.