How To Fix the Ugly MIME Headers When Using Gmail on a Windows Phone

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If you have a Windows Phone and you use Gmail, then whether you realize it or not, you have sent at least one email that was received looking like this:

How To Fix the Ugly Mime Headers When Using Gmail on a Windows Phone

And if you were replying to something that had significant forwarded or copied text in it, then the people who received your reply likely saw something that looked like this:

How To Fix the Ugly Mime Headers When Using Gmail on a Windows Phone

Pretty ugly, right? I have no idea why Google and Windows Phone have chosen to play so poorly together; all I know is that it is ugly, and I do not like knowing that people are receiving emails from me that look so awful.

Screen Shot 2013-05-31 at 7.11.17 PM

It turns out that this MIME issue isn’t random at all; it only happens on emails with long subject lines. You’ll notice that on most of the example emails shown, the subject line is getting truncated, and the rest of the subject line is usually found in the first line of the email.

Why does it happen? I don’t know. But you can make it stop before it gets out of hand by doing this:

Shorten the subject line to fix Windows Phone MIME Issue

Shorten the subject line to fix Windows Phone MIME Issue

As long as you can remember to shorten the subject line significantly, your email will not display the ugly MIME headers.

So that’s the solution for one problem.

But does anyone know how to fix this Gmail/Windows Phone issue?

Windows Phone Gobbledy Gook

I have no idea what is going on here. =P

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She started in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie is best known for her device-agnostic approach, deep-dive reviews, and enjoyment of exploring the latest tech, gadgets, and gear.

1 Comment on "How To Fix the Ugly MIME Headers When Using Gmail on a Windows Phone"

  1. loopyduck | May 31, 2013 at 11:57 pm |

    Regarding the second issue, googling
    gmail wingdings
    returns reports of the same problem on Android and BlackBerry with GMail. What they seem to have in common is that the email is the nth reply in a back-and-forth conversation, where n is some large number. The screenshot you have does seem to have a reply in there somewhere…

Comments are closed.