Why do PDF files or emails contain garbage characters?

← PDF and Email FAQ

In certain cases, users encounter junk symbols or omitted characters in PDF files produced by JustOn or in emails sent via Salesforce or on forms. For example, symbols like $ or ? show up in the middle of words. To solve this, you must enable Unicode.

To enable Unicode for invoices, dunning reminders, etc. based on templates v1:

1. Open the template to be edited.
2. Click Edit.
3. In the Formatting section, select the checkbox Use Unicode Font.

4. Click Save.

   This enables the font Arial Unicode MS for the text rendering, which allows for printing virtually any character of any language, but impedes bold and italic text formatting.

To set the email encoding to UTF-8:

1. Open the Language & Time Zone page.

   In Salesforce Lightning, click your image and select Settings, then navigate to My Personal Information > Language & Time Zone.

   In Salesforce Classic, navigate to My Settings > Personal > Language & Time Zone.

2. In the field Email Encoding, select Unicode (UTF-8).

3. Click Save.
4. Repeat this configuration for all users who send emails from JustOn.

Info

UTF-8 can represent virtually any character of any languages (Unicode), but may not be supported by older email software. However, users who send email with non-Latin data, like the Euro symbol, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, etc. need to use this encoding.

Related information:

Adjusting Invoice Formatting
Symbols and special characters show up in emails sent via Salesforce | Salesforce Knowledge Base