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How to tell TB to use the char set befined by the incomming message

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by sfhowes

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The char set of my TB-client is set to utf-8. Sometimes incoming mails use char set="iso-8859-1", mostly mails sent from MS-Outlook! i.e. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0055_01D5B5C6.1F3AD8C0" X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 16.0 Thread-Index: AdW1vWIp34TBbueUQn27zs3NUv1eDw== Content-Language: de-ch

This is a multipart message in MIME format.


=_NextPart_000_0055_01D5B5C6.1F3AD8C0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0056_01D5B5C6.1F3AFFD0"



=_NextPart_001_0056_01D5B5C6.1F3AFFD0

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

In all those cases non ASCII chars are represented as '?' question mark which makes reading of the mail difficult! The raw text view of the mail shows for instance: 'ü' as '=FC' or 'ö' as '=F6' How and where to tell TB to use the char set defined by the incoming mail to represent such characters correctly? I intend to continue to use utf-8 for outgoing mails. But incoming mails should use the char set of the sender and maybe covert correctly to utf-8 on reply!

The char set of my TB-client is set to utf-8. Sometimes incoming mails use char set="iso-8859-1", mostly mails sent from MS-Outlook! i.e. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0055_01D5B5C6.1F3AD8C0" X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 16.0 Thread-Index: AdW1vWIp34TBbueUQn27zs3NUv1eDw== Content-Language: de-ch This is a multipart message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0055_01D5B5C6.1F3AD8C0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0056_01D5B5C6.1F3AFFD0" ------=_NextPart_001_0056_01D5B5C6.1F3AFFD0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable In all those cases non ASCII chars are represented as '?' question mark which makes reading of the mail difficult! The raw text view of the mail shows for instance: 'ü' as '=FC' or 'ö' as '=F6' How and where to tell TB to use the char set defined by the incoming mail to represent such characters correctly? I intend to continue to use utf-8 for outgoing mails. But incoming mails should use the char set of the sender and maybe covert correctly to utf-8 on reply!

All Replies (2)

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Is Thunderbird not using the charset? View menu > text encoding

All I can really do is refer you to this bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=936466 which appears from my reading to merge various character sets, but I really don't understand the logic used.

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If you are seeing question marks ? in place of non-ASCII characters, that could be caused by a bug with TB senders sending through AOL or Yahoo servers. There is a workaround to correct the display at your end, but it requires the senders to make a simple change. Is a Yahoo, or any of its varieties, sending account a common factor in these messages?