Send Non-English E-Mail

Note: Before you can use any of these e-mail packages, all the proper keyboards and fonts must be installed and activated for each script.

Avoid HTML Formatted Mail: These options may add font specifications that may not be available on all computers.

Caution for Outside Penn State : These instructions work for Penn State to Penn State mail. Any e-mail message you send to or receive from elsewhere must go through host servers and be read on the other user's e-mail package. Therefore, there are no guarantees on how the messages will processed outside of Penn State.

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1. Thunderbird
2. Microsoft Outlook
3. Apple Mail for OS X
4. Microsoft Entourage (Mac)
5. Eudora

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a free e-mail client from Mozilla.org, the makers or Mozilla and Firefox. Once Thunderbird is installed, you can send non-English messages as follows. The following instructions are for Thunderbird 2; there may be variations for different versions.

Note: If you have never used this e-mail package before, then you need to set up a profile for your account. Follow instructions from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or workplace.

1. Open Thunderbird, and click on the Write icon to open a blank message.
2. Go to the Options » Character Encoding menu and select Unicode (UTF-8) or other appropriate option.
   Note: In earilier versions Thunderbird, go to View » Characrter Encoding.
3. To insert an accented letter or common symbol, go to Insert » Characters and Symbols...
4. Check whether your character is an Accent Uppercase, Accent Lowercase, Other Uppercase, Other Lowercase or Common Symbol.
5. For Accent, select a base Letter (e.a. A) in the drop-down menu, then the appropriate Character in the next menu. For the other options, only the Character menu is available. See image below.
6. For opther scripts switch keyboards to the script or language you wish to type. Send when completed.
   Note: If your encoding is not correct Thunderbird will prompt you to switch encodings.
7. If you receive a message in a non-English script, but cannot read it, then open the message and go to Options » Character Encoding and select the correct script or language.
   

Thunderbird Insert Character Pop-Up Window

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Microsoft Outlook for Windows

Note: If you have never used this e-mail package before, then you need to set up a profile for your account. Follow instructions from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or workplace.

1. Open a blank new message in Microsoft Windows.
2. Switch your keyboards to the appropriate script.
3. Type the message then send it. It will be properly encoded.

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Apple Mail Application for OS X

Note: If you have never used this e-mail package before, then you need to set up a profile for your account. Follow instructions from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or workplace.

1. Open a blank new message.
2. Switch your keyboards to the appropriate script.
3. Type the message then send it. It will be properly encoded.

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Microsoft Entourage for Macintosh

Note: If you have never used this e-mail package before, then you need to set up a profile for your account. Follow instructions from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or workplace.

1. Open a new message.
2. Switch your keyboards to the appropriate script.
3. If necessary, go to the Format menu then Character Set to select an appropriate encoding such as Unicode (UTF-8).
4. Type the message then send it. It will be properly encoded.
   Note: Click OK for any messages saying that not clients will read the message.

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Eudora

The standard version of Eudora can read most properly encoded messages, but cannot send them out. Two suggested workarounds are:

1. If you mostly send out English language messages, then you can use another package like Thunderbird to send out encoded non-English messages.
2. Buy a localized version of Eudora (e.g. Japanese Eudora) if it is available.

Note: An open source of Eudora is being developed which may include Unicode support, but as the product is still in Beta, it has not been tested yet.

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©Penn State University, 2000-2009.
This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt (ejp10@psu.edu).

Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character Charts.

Last Modified: Thursday, 17-Sep-2009 10:41:28 EDT