The other thing that could be happening, is that the "connections" between a character code, and its graphic icon, are lost when the other person replies to your messages.
If the Emoji are characters (rather than bitmap files), encoded with a particular character set, the reply might alter the character set, and then those characters map to something else, or instead display as Hex codes. Diane's reply that quotes \uD83D\uDC47 suggests that this might be happening. That *could* mean that your recipients see the correct Emoji, but they are lost when forwarded or sent back to you as a reply. Andy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Gmail-Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/gmail-users. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
