Hey
Let's go straight to the example.
I send email from my Exchange mailbox to my IBM Lotus Notes mailbox and that email contains smiling icon.
Email source (in Outlook) looked like that:
<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" (cut some)>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
.....
@font-face
{font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji";
panose-1:2 11 5 2 4 2 4 2 2 3;}
/* Style Definitions */
.....
</style></head>
<body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=NO-BOK>Bla bla bla </span><span lang=NO-BOK style='font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif'>😊</span><span lang=NO-BOK><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
.....
@font-face
{font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji";
panose-1:2 11 5 2 4 2 4 2 2 3;}
/* Style Definitions */
.....
</style></head>
<body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=NO-BOK>Bla bla bla </span><span lang=NO-BOK style='font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif'>😊</span><span lang=NO-BOK><o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>
However, as soon as I switched email to EDIT mode or clicked REPLY WITH HISTORY the icon disappeared and ? appeared instead.
I think Lotus Notes just does not how to deal with colorful "Segoe UI Emoji" font family but if you know how to fix that - please share. The main issue is that this is a common problem, I mean, if you try to create NotesMIMEEntity programmatically and put there HTML with 😊 you will get the same result.
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Updated later.
I tested this case more and found some new interesting details.
The email I used for demo above I received as an example from a colleague so when I described the case above I just played with already received email.
When I tried to create an email in Outlook myself and checked its source I didn't find there any HTML codes for the icons - instead I saw this - see below.
I sent the email above to my Notes mailbox.
It looked very good in READ mode and the icons were still usable in EDIT mode though they became black and white.
Read mode above
Edit mode above
So, obviously, the reason of the issue described on the very top is not related to Segoe UI Emoji font family. The reason is that Notes does not know how to render <span lang=NO-BOK style='font-family:"Segoe UI Emoji",sans-serif'>😊</span> in Richtextitem in Edit mode. I do not know how that first email was created so that it contained HTML code 😊 but it does not really matter.
Btw, the funny thing is that the same email in Gmail looks differently also :-)
Here it is the same email from outside - the last icon is black&white.
This is the same email from inside.
