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International Support in Outlook Express
Oulook Express as a mail and newsgroup client supports many languages and codepages. Having multiple languages and codepage keyboards/Input Method Editors (IMEs) installed on your computer, you can compose messages in more than one language or encoding. However, due to the diversity of messaging conventions used in many countries, to avoid problems with legibility of messages you send/receive in the local language environment, and to ensure that you comply with local conventions, you may need to check or modify some international settings in Outlook Express. Here is a checklist of international support-related settings.
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On This Page
 | Enabling MIME Settings |
| Checking Codepage Support |
| Changing Codepage for Individual Messages |
| Using Symbols |
Enabling MIME Settings
To be sure that messages you send have proper international support enabled, and your recipient messaging clients will know how your messages are encoded to display them properly, please make sure that you use MIME support.
1. | 1. In Outlook Express click Tools – Options |
2. | 2. Go to the Send tab |
3. | 3. Separately for Mail and News ensure that MIME format is selected.  When this setting is selected, Outlook Express, in accordance with MIME convention, inserts character set and encoding declaration into you message headers. It allows your recipient Mail and News clients to properly display your messages, according to language settings that you use. When Uuencode setting is selected, charset/encoding declaration is missing in your message header. As a result, in an environment where many codepages are used, your recipient’s messaging clients may not always be able to recognize properly your message encoding and they may display it incorrectly. |
Checking Codepage Support
1. | In Outlook Express click Tools – Options |
2. | Go to the Send tab |
3. | Click International Settings button. Make sure you use a proper codepage that is commonly used in your region and language  If you are still experiencing problems with codepage, or character set in Outlook Express, while using Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows 2003 Server, please check your system’s support for non-Unicode applications." |
NOTES:
| • | To perform this procedure, you must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority. If the computer is joined to a domain, members of the Domain Admins group would be able to perform this procedure. |
| • | To open a Control Panel item, click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click the appropriate icon. |
1. | Go to Control Panel |
2. | Click on Regional Options |
3. | Go to Advanced tab. |
4. | Under Select a language to match the language version of the non-Unicode programs you want to use: choose your language from the drop down list.  |
5. | Click on Apply button. |
Changing Codepage for Individual Messages
If you want to send a message to a recipient who is using a language or codepage that is different from your typical settings, you can choose settings for an individual message you are composing, without the need to change or affect your permanent settings.
1. While composing a message, click Format
2. Select Encoding
3. If the desired encoding doesn’t appear on the list, select More, to see a larger selection of codepage choices.
Using Symbols
When you are composing your message using symbols or characters that don’t belong to your current codepage (such as currency, mathematical symbols, or characters from other alphabets) before sending the message, Outlook Express may warn you of the possibility that your non-default characters may be lost, or unintelligible to your recipients. In such situation, Outlook Express will propose the following courses of action for you to choose from:
Choosing "Send as Unicode" will reset your message encoding to Unicode UTF-8 standard. This encoding should preserve your characters and should be legible by a majority of leading modern mail and news clients.
Your recipients may have difficulties reading such message only if they use outdated, downlevel mail clients. If this is the case, you may prefer to select "Send As Is" option, to send the message with current encoding. You need to be aware that some of the symbols that you used in your message may be lost, or become illegible to your recipient.