Why are my Apostrophes and Quotes being turned into other characters or disappear from my emails

If you are having any sort of problem with Single Quotes, Double Quotes, or Apostrophes being changed into some other character or completely disappearing from your emails, the answer is most likely “Smart Quotes”. These so-called “Smart Quotes” turn normal quotes into fancy quotes that appear to curve inwards around quoted text. However, FileMaker’s Smart Quotes overwrite the character positions of other normal characters and therefore do not export well. Since the plug-in has no way of knowing if your database has “Smart Quotes” enabled, it has no way of knowing if the “Smart Quote” character positions in your email should be considered as quotes or should be considered as the actual characters at those character positions.

So, you should always turn off “Smart Quotes” in your database when you will be sending emails from it (or doing anything else where you might be exporting the data from FileMaker). Turning off Smart Quotes is very easy.

Go to FileMaker’s “File” Menu, select “File Options”, and then select the “Text” Tab. Un-check the “Use Smart Quotes” checkbox and press the “OK” button. After turning off “Smart Quotes”, you may have to retype some quotes in your fields in some rare situations to make them stop being “smart”.