Emoji showing as blank

After an update to the Messenger app on my wife’s Moto G4 Android phone, the emoticons stopped showing up on texts to other people. The emoji was missing from the text but they still showed up on the SMS keyboard.  Basically the issue was the emoji showing as blank in an SMS text. See the image below.

To fix this, do the following:

On your phone
Open Messenger
  Open Settings
    Select Advanced
      Use Simple Characters (Turn off)
         * – The issue happens if this setting is set to “Convert special characters in your SMS messages“. To fix it, just TURN OFF Use Simple Characters.

For the record, my wife’s phone was running Android version 6.0.1 (Marshmallow). 

Now try sending texts with emoticons or emjoies or whatever they’re called and it will work. Hope this helps someone out there! If so, don’t be shy, leave a comment!