XFOR: Character Set Not Supported

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Exchange Server, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

When you use Microsoft Exchange Server, you may get messages in your inbox stating:

   This message was sent using a character set not supported on the
   Internet Mail Connector. The message text has been placed into the
   attachment: ATT00001.txt. To view, double-click on the attachment. If
   the text isn't displayed correctly, save the attachment to disk, and
   then use a viewer that can display the original character set.

WORKAROUND

The workaround is to set the sending system to use a supported character set, for example, ISO-8859 or US-ASCII (or something found on the Internet Mail tab for the IMC).

MORE INFORMATION

To see which character set was used in sending the message, view the properties of the message and look on the Headers tab. Scroll down to the bottom and find the line that looks like:

   Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

A character set of X-roman8 or X-anything is not supported by the IMC.

Excerpt from RFC-1521:

   No other character set name may be used in Internet mail without the
   publication of a formal specification and its registration with IANA,
   or by private agreement, in which case the character set name must
   begin with "X-".

   Implementors are discouraged from defining new character sets for
   mail use unless absolutely necessary.