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Problem description
Garbled text appears when the sender and recipient use incompatible character encodings. For example, accented characters display as symbols like é, or entire lines are replaced with question marks.
Check the garbled output before attempting any fix:
Symbols (such as
éor’): the original text is recoverable by switching the encoding in your mail client.Question marks (
?): the data was permanently lost during encoding conversion and cannot be restored.
Cause
The Alibaba Mail web client sends emails using Unicode (UTF-8) encoding by default. If the recipient's email client does not support UTF-8, the email body displays as garbled text.
Solutions
Temporary fix
a. Log on to the web client and select the email in your inbox. Right-click the email body, click Encoding, and then select a character encoding that matches the sender's language (for example, GB2312 for Simplified Chinese content).
b. If you use a third-party email client, change the character encoding in that client's settings.
Permanent fixes
Ask your email service provider to add support for UTF-8 encoding.
Use a third-party email client to reply to or forward the affected email. Many third-party clients default to GB2312 for these actions, and the local operating system can handle the encoding conversion.
The sender can switch to a third-party email client and set GB2312 as the default outbound encoding instead of UTF-8.
More information
Websites in the Chinese mainland commonly use the Simplified Chinese GB2312 character set. Websites in Hong Kong (China), Macao (China), and Taiwan (China) typically use the Traditional Chinese Big5 character set. Most providers, such as Sohu, also support UTF-8. However, a small number of email service providers do not yet support UTF-8. When an email is forwarded or replied to through the web client of such a provider, the text becomes garbled and cannot be restored.
UTF-8 covers both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters and correctly displays text in multiple languages. It is the internationally standardized character set. As UTF-8 adoption grows, it will eventually replace the legacy GBK and Big5 character sets. International emails sent and received through Alibaba Mail no longer have garbled text issues. The remaining cases mainly affect email service providers that use GB2312 by default and do not yet support UTF-8.
Applicable to
Alibaba Mail