Mail encoding of text

Apple stupidly removed the ability to adjust incoming or outgoing encodings in Mail starting with OS X 10.9. There is nothing you can do to fix that except to use webmail or another mail app. Or you could try switching your OS language to Russian, but not sure that would help.

Check your settings in System Preferences > Language & Region... the order of the languages in this list affects which language it will attempt to use first and second, et al.

OS X: Changing the language shown in menus and dialogs - Apple Support

I have same issues with text encoding after I upgraded to Yosemite. Then I solved it by pure chance :-)

Forward the e-mails that you cannot read to yourself and see what happens. It worked for me with Korean and Chinese.

I have the same issue. Upgrading to El Capitan didn't solve the problem.

Bug requests in Feedback Assistant tool: for Yosemite #523042 (28 Feb 2015), for El Capitan Public Beta #966229 (20 Jul 2015)

And it's not a problem with sender's encoding.

There are the steps to reproduce the problem:

Environment:

Language&Region

Preferred Language

- English - Primary

- Russian

Region

- Russia - Russian

List sort order

- Russian

Keyboard

Text

- Correct spelling automatically = true

- Spelling = Automatic by Language

- Use smart quotes and dashes = true

Use case scenario:

1. Mail.app is running, 1 exchange account is active (exchange 2010 server)

2. Somebody sends an email in Russian using MS Outlook 2010 or 2013 that have a certain symbol in text that can be inserted in email’s text field in Outlook like this:

2.1 insert > symbol

2.2 type «space» button

2.3 Outlook autocorrection transforms the > symbol into the symbol that looks like the UNICODE sysmbol U+27A2 (usually people do so to show the quoted text)

3. Received email in Mail.app can’t be read because of bad encoding interpretation. All text looks like:

ŽąŽāŽÝŽåŽéŽÚŽÝŽāŽãŽî ŽáŽāŽÝŽåŽéŽÚŽäŽî ŽāŽäŽÓŽÖŽä ŽßŽŅ ŽáŽāŽâŽāŽã?

instead of

Получилось получить ответ на порос?

If this email is forwarded using Mail.app to somebody with Outlook 2010/2013 on Windows, received email on other side will have the same look as at Mail.app like this:

ŽąŽāŽÝŽåŽéŽÚŽÝŽāŽãŽî ŽáŽāŽÝŽåŽéŽÚŽäŽî ŽāŽäŽÓŽÖŽä ŽßŽŅ ŽáŽāŽâŽāŽã?

And YES, somehow encoding in RAW message switches from UTF-8 (default for Mail.app) or KOI8-R (default for Outlook in Windows) to Korean charset="ks_c_5601-1987".

It seems to me it's a bug in Mail.app when communicating with Outlook as Exchange client.

91koff wrote:

And YES, somehow encoding in RAW message switches from UTF-8 (default for Mail.app) or KOI8-R (default for Outlook in Windows) to Korean charset="ks_c_5601-1987".

When you use View > Message > Raw Source in Mail on the original incoming, does it already have the junk Korean encoding? If so, then it must be Exchange that is messing it up. Mail cannot change the raw source of an incoming message.

The sequence is the following:

Sender (A) and recipient (B) use same Exchange server but on Outlook Win clients.

I use Mail.app as Exchange client (C).

1. A creates original message in Outlook Windows sends to B, C in copy:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="koi8-r"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

2. B replies using "> " symbol, C in copy.

3. C (me) sees unreadable characters and korean encoding in RAW message in OS X Mail.app (fact one).

C (me) sees Readable characters in Mail.app in iOS (fact two), can't get encoding info.

C (me) sees readable characters in Outlook Win running in VM on the same Exchange account with korean encoding (fact three).

You are right, looks like Exchange breaks the encoding.

91koff wrote:

You are right, looks like Exchange breaks the encoding.

Mail probably still has a bug. I think it should be able to display the russian even though the encoding is a pretty obsolete one intended primarily for Korean.

I posted this a while ago, but has anyone tried this?

I am curious this works for others too:

I have same issues with text encoding after I upgraded to Yosemite. Then I solved it by pure chance :-)

Forward the e-mails that you cannot read to yourself and see what happens.

It worked for me with Korean and Chinese.

Finally

It looks like the bug is not in Mail.app or Exchange Server but in Outlook client of the sender.

Found these articles:

http://btsc.webapps.blackberry.com/btsc/viewdocument.do;jsessionid=354D19BC6CF7D 3AD9B2CF6D4516A26D8?externalId=KB19676&sliceId=1&cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&noCoun t=true&ViewedDocsListHelper=com.kanisa.apps.common.BaseViewedDocsListHelperImpl

and

https://support.tigertech.net/email-charset

Solutions are:

1. Fix Outlook bug (actually two bugs: do not change charset to Korean and do not ignore charset header in messages displaying them). Best way.

2. Try to live with Outlook bug and implement in other clients (like Mail.app) workaround to show message content ignoring charset header (to be like Outlook). Bad way.

3. Workaround is to ask sender to change his or her default Outlook settings to switch default encoding of outgoing messages strictly to UTF-8.

Same problem for me on El Capitan, but user sent mail w/o Exchange. And I received e-mail in Simplified Chinese instead of Russian.

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="GB2312"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

But for me it is much more convenient option to have ability to change encoding to whatever I want on my side (e.g. Message -> Encoding in Mail.app), comparing to the option - ask all buggy Outlook owners to reconfigure their clients. Or even wait for MS to fix Outlook :-)

There is a workaround to read mail content, but it is a bit user unfriendly. Might be useful to create automator action.

1. Copy base64 encoded text blocks from mail source and paste in text file with name mail.b64. The blocks of characters after

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="GB2312"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

Should look like:

SGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29y

bGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQKCtCS0YHQ

tdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC1

0Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQ

vCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8

INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRggoKSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8g

d29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVs

bG8gd29ybGQKCtCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA

0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQ

uNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC4

0LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRggoKSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVs

bG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQg

SGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQKCtCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXR

giDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGC

INCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg

0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRggoK

SGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29y

bGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQKCtCS0YHQ

tdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC1

0Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQ

vCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8

INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRggoKSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8g

d29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVsbG8gd29ybGQgSGVs

bG8gd29ybGQKCtCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA

0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC40LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQ

uNCy0LXRgiDQktGB0LXQvCDQv9GA0LjQstC10YIg0JLRgdC10Lwg0L/RgNC4

0LLQtdGCINCS0YHQtdC8INC/0YDQuNCy0LXRggo=

2. Use Terminal.app:

base64 -D -i <path_to>/mail.b64 -o mail.badcoding

3. In the same Terminal window:

iconv -f GB2312 -t utf8 <mail.badcoding

If charset you are having trouble with is ks_c_5601-1987, change last command to

iconv -f KS_C_5601-1987 -t utf8 <mail.badcoding

Yup. It's an Exchange 2010 problem. And no fix for this except ask your admins to upgrade Exchange to 2013 or later 😟

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/969854/the-body-of-a-message-is-shown-i ncorrectly-as-an-attachment-if-you-try-to-use-an-application-in-an-exchange-serv er-environment-to-send-a-message-that-includes-attachments

krylovdx wrote:

The system language is russian.

Have you tried with the system language set to English?