Level 1

15 points

Mail to Outlook users garbles International characters

I am running OSX 10.4.1 and Mail 2.0.1.

When I send mail to Win Outlook/Outlook Express users using UTF-8 encoding they cannot read my International characters (åäöÅÄÖ). They show up as garbled chars.

In 10.3 Mail mails created with "Rich Text" always defaulted to ISO-8859. This have now changed to UTF-8 when sending mail with attachments or formatted signatures with graphics included.

Why doesn't Mail encode International chars correctly. Or rather: why cannot Outlook/ Outlook Express users see my International characters? Is it Mail 2.0.1 or Outlook that's responsible for this?

If I use "Plain text" setting in Prefs it works (ISO-8859 encoding) but I want to send formatted text and HTML links in my mail and signatures.

Posted on May 19, 2005 6:53 AM

39 replies

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

May 26, 2005 2:34 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

Great stuff! I sent you a reply with some ideas for tests/solutions.

May 26, 2005 2:54 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

Would I be asking too much to be able to format in rich text? Or should I just count my blessings as is?

Kevin

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

May 26, 2005 4:09 PM in response to Kevin Soileau

Kevin -- it may be a question of whether the system at the other end can handle rich text (=html). Certainly Apple Mail can handle it with zero problems.

If you send me a test message in rich text I'll have a look to see if there are any obvious issues.

Klas Ahlin Author

Level 1

15 points

May 26, 2005 4:17 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom,
once again thanks for your additional off-line answers.

I have done some additional testing under Win2k with the latest release of Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird and I found following:

My test mails, with a mix of plain text including International characters, formatted HTML (also including International characters, graphics and attachment) showed up fine in Thunderbird but not in OE as I stated in earlier postings in this thread.

If I change the Viewing encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-7 in OE the International characters in the plain text section is displayed properly, but now the International characters in the HTML part is garbled instead.

This makes me draw the conclusion that Outlook/Outlook Express does not handle a mix of UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 very well, especially if International characters are used.

This is very unfortunate for Apple since Outlook/Outlook Express is the de-facto standard, regardless if Apple is doing it "right" and follows all open standards.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

May 26, 2005 4:40 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

This makes me draw the conclusion that Outlook/Outlook Express does not handle a mix of UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1 very well, especially if International characters are used.

I think this is right. Perhaps with some luck we can find a way to make Mail send everything in one encoding.

Klas Ahlin Author

Level 1

15 points

May 27, 2005 2:56 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

After additional testing the conclusion is that Mail MUST be forced to use same (UTF-8) encoding for both plain text and HTML sections in a mail. If this is true Outlook users will read International characters correctly in mail composed by Tiger Mail 2.0(.1).

This is done by first closing Mail app, open Terminal and then type:

defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset "UTF-8"

Then fire up Mail and in Preferences -> Composing choose "Rich text" and "Use the same format as the original message".

All mails now composed with mixed content of rich text, graphics, attachments and International characters will be properly presented for Windows Outlook/OE users. Now all MIME sections will have UTF-8 as encoding.

May 29, 2005 12:08 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

Klas,

I have tried your solution and it works perfectly for me. This is an encoding issue.

Jul 19, 2005 12:40 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

Hi Klas,

I've been trying to find a solution to this accent problem for several days now as two of our Powerbooks seem to have contracted the "plague". I did what you suggested on both and the problem seems to have been resolved at least for one. Did you do any further research on the subject? Any more solutions? Or should we just wait until the people from Apple look into it? This is a huge problem for us as we send around 300 emails a day to all over the World and in 6 languages. Some of our contacts don't even reply when they receive an email in French with all the accents replaced by chinese caracters or some strang swedish or whatever letters. I'm about to move to Thunderbird or will I have the same problem?
Thanks. Mark (Valparaiso, Chile)

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

Jul 19, 2005 3:13 PM in response to Mark Dannau

Mark -- have you seen this note?

Tom Gewecke, "kmail: Fixing Garbled Text in Win Outlook from Tiger Mail", 06:15pm May 27, 2005 CDT

I don't know if Apple plans to change the way Mail works in this area, which is not technically wrong as far as I know. I haven't heard that Thunderbird causes any problems with Outlook.

Aug 24, 2005 8:59 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom, Although I did all you suggested, I continue having problems with some correspondants (not all). This is an example of the text they receive (in french):

Je suis dÃ©solÃ©e, j'ai Ã©tÃ© distraite et j'ai oubliÃ© de joindre le PDF .

What do you think?

Mark

Lukum

Level 1

60 points

Sep 3, 2005 9:25 AM in response to Mark Dannau

Hi Mark,

I also write in french and have the same problem. I read in another thread that putting the signature above quoted text (Préférences>Placer la signature avant le texte cité) would do the job. I'm going to test that too and be back if it works. Anyhow, Apple should fix the problem.

Sep 5, 2005 5:55 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi,

I also have the problem with mails which I send to M$ Outlook and have german characters. Instead of äöüß I get Ã¤ Ã¼ and so on.

I asked my provider and he told me to change the eMail encoding from UTF-8to iso-8859-1 or iso-8859-15. He said the reason is, that UTF-8 is not conform with the RFC's for eMail formats.

But how can I change the encoding permanently?
This means I have to write:
defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset "ISO-2022-JP"
In the terminal - but what do I have instead of "ISO-2022-JP"

Thanks in advance - and please excuse my english.

Best regards
René

Sep 5, 2005 7:27 PM in response to Klas Ahlin

I tried changing the default in Mail as per the kmail note above, but even then my Hungarian characters were coming through as gibberish.

I also tried sending in plain text, but my recipient didn't report it as working. She's on Earthlink, running Windows XP.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

Sep 6, 2005 4:17 AM in response to Doug Dunston

Doug -- perhaps you have a different problem, since it is pretty hard for plain text to get botched by mail. Could you send me test messages of the same sort that caused you problems, one rich and one plain, with some Hungarian? Click on my name for the address.

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,058 points

Sep 6, 2005 4:33 AM in response to Rene Scrubei

what do I have instead of "ISO-2022-JP"

Rene -- You have "ISO-8859-1"

But your provider is incorrect, there is nothing wrong with sending UTF-8 email except possibly where the other end is using very old software, webmail, or a cell phone.

Also you can try sending Plain Text instead of Rich Text, if you are using the latter.

If you like, send me a test message of the type causing you problems and I'll have a look to see if there is anything odd. Click on my name for the address.

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Mail to Outlook users garbles International characters