Mac OS X 10.4: Japanese message doesn't appear correctly in web mail or on cell phone when sent from Mail

  • Last Modified: July 22, 2005
  • Article: TA23398
  • Old Article: 301986

Products Affected

Mail, Mac OS X 10.4

If you send a message from Mail in Mac OS X 10.4 that contains Japanese language characters, it may not appear correctly in web mail (email accessed from a webpage) or on some cell phones.

This can happen because Mail encodes Japanese language messages as UTF-8 by default when English is the primary language selected in International preferences.

To resolve this issue, use Terminal to switch from using UTF-8 encoding to ISO-2022-JP encoding:

  1. Open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/).
  2. Type the following command at the prompt:

    defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset "ISO-2022-JP"

  3. Press Return to execute the command.
  4. Quit Terminal.

This document will be updated as more information becomes available.

Not helpful Somewhat helpful Helpful Very helpful Solved my problem