XFOR: Character Set Not Supported

ID: Q157735


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" 
If the character set used to send the message to Microsoft Exchange Server is anything other than US-ASCII, you may see this behavior. In compliance with RFC-1521 the character set that is supported is 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.

Additional query words: 4.00

Keywords : XFOR
Version : winnt:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type :


Last Reviewed: January 12, 2000
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