Text encoding with AppleMail and contacts

Question

Text encoding with AppleMail and contacts

Hi,

I'm french and whenever I send my contact Vcard (VCF file) via AppleMail (version 9.3) on my MacBookAir (OSX El Capitan 10.11.6), some Microsoft/Outlook users see all the accents and apostrophes replaced by weird symbols. I've changed the Vcard format from 3.0 to 2.1 Unicode-UTF but that didn't solve the problem. Any suggestions?

I've tried the fixes in this link but to no avail either

https://www.macissues.com/2014/12/15/fix-character-typing-problems-in-os-x-mail/

Thank you in advance

Richard

Posted on Apr 20, 2018 12:22 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,870 points

Apr 20, 2018 1:45 PM in response to Richard_Québec

I don't think Mail has anything to do with it, the encoding is part of the vcf file. It sounds like the recipients may be trying to read it with the legacy WIndows Latin encoding instead of the standard Unicode. Perhaps they can change that at their end?

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Answer 2

Apr 21, 2018 6:53 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom,

found a solution but not perfect. First of all I've changed the encoding in Terminal to

defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset "ISO-8859-1″

and the encoding in Contacts/Preference to V2.1 Latin

If I drag my Vcard from Contacts into Apple Mail, everything is fine, my signature line in Mail as well as the contents of my Vcard are not distorted. However if I export my Vcard directly from Contacts into Mail, all my accents in my signature line as well as in the contents of my Vcard (despite the settings in Contacts) are all replaced by symbols, very weird.

Any insights?

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,870 points

Apr 21, 2018 5:54 PM in response to Richard_Québec

Could you post screenshots of what you are seeing?

I would not change anything about the encoding of Mail. It should be enough to use V2.1 Western Windows Latin 1 for Contacts to have the card show up correctly in Windows Outlook where the user has not activated UTF-8.

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,027 points

Apr 22, 2018 9:14 AM in response to Richard_Québec

Screen shots

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Text encoding with AppleMail and contacts

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