Have you checked what your textcoding is set to?

Thanks for the reply, I havve just reset the keyboard language to check that (UK English) and also unchecked the HTML in the composition settings. This may have reduced the problem, but it is not yet fully resloved - still getting additional characters with the Pound Sterling symbol (£) here and don't know if the incoming messages are still affected. - R

You're getting these in messages while you're composing? This issue usually comes up with incoming mail and is also often seen in browsers. They can be connected with users who use non-standard fonts such as wingdings in their email.

None of the things you say you have tried are likely to affect it. Gnospen is thinking of the View|Character Encoding setting; mine is set to Unicode and I don't understand why anyone would choose one of the regional variants when Unicode is available.

You could look at Tools|Options|Display|Formatting→Advanced and check if you have selected mainstream fonts for your email contents.

Many thanks, have tried coming out of HTML Arial font and the same persists. Have now gone back to Arial, Have just tried switching to Unicode from 'Western' - still the same on the £ sign. The extra characters appear when the messages are sent or saved in drafts, as well as incoming messages, some incoming messages may come from Mac machines - dont know if this could cause any issues these days?