Getting the text of an incoming message in Apple Mail is pretty straightforward (albeit not intuitive):

tell application "Mail"
set mySel to selection
set Msg to item 1 of mySel
set msgText to content of Msg
end tell

(Why those lines won't combined escapes me)

Works fine most of the time, but every so often I hit a message where the result is 

"?"

I can't find anything special about these messages. Content: text/plain, charset ASCII, etc. 

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Bill Steele
[log in to unmask]