Yahoo Mail problems with Chinese text

[csy]

I'm having trouble sending emails in Chinese using Yahoo web mail (with a .com, not .com.cn domain). It seems that Yahoo defaults to Unicode (UTF- encoding.

However, the default encoding used in mainland China is GB2312, not Unicode, so all the recipient sees is a jumble of strange characters.

Chinese email providers such as mail.sohu.com allow the user to set the character encoding, but Yahoo doesn't seem to provide such an option. I'd like to keep using Yahoo since I've had my email address for a long time and don't want to manage multiple accounts.

I'm wondering if anyone else has had the same problem, and found a workaround? Thanks.

[roddy]

This isn't a solution so much as a potential work-around if you can't find a solution. Yahoo Mail actually allows you POP3 access, or to forward email to another address - so if you set up another GB2312-friendly account you can have your mail forwarded on directly to that to deal with, while keeping your old Yahoo address.

To set it up you have to look deep in the options - it's hidden somewhere in there. You also need to agree to recieve spam.

Roddy

[skylee]

Yahoo Mail actually allows you POP3 access, or to forward email to another address - so if you set up another GB2312-friendly account you can have your mail forwarded on directly to that to deal with, while keeping your old Yahoo address.

I think you will have to use Yahoo mail plus (i.e. pay) to get these services ...

[roddy]

Nope, just checked. Under the mail menu > options > POP3 access and forwarding

You have to allow them to send you 'special offers' or something, but you can get those sent to any email address, not one you actually use. And I'm using .co.uk, maybe different for other domains.

Roddy

[gato]

I'm having trouble sending emails in Chinese using Yahoo web mail (with a .com, not .com.cn domain). It seems that Yahoo defaults to Unicode (UTF- encoding.

I seem have had the reverse problem. I couldn't read some Yahoo emails on my gmail account because gmail uses UTF-8. The emails from Yahoo were in GB, but they listed iso8859 (a Latin character set) in the email header, causing gmail to display them as garbage. I was able to read them only when I told gmail to display the raw text and chose GB encoding on my browser.

Have you tried tweaking the encoding option on your browser? Make sure it's in GB when you're typing your email.

[Jose]

If you write emails in Chinese to just a few friends, you could ask them to change the encoding manually whenever they receive your emails. It is just two mouse clicks: View -> Encoding -> Unicode (utf-8 ). Unless they're using stone-age browsers or operating systems, I think that should work. Similarly, when you open a message from China on non-Chinese Yahoo Mail, the text will be something like "ÄãºÃ..." until you select View -> Encoding -> Chinese Simplified (GB2312).

If this is not satisfactory for you, and you really need the text in your message to be GB-encoded so that Chinese people can read your emails straight away, there is only a way I can think of, which involves using NJStar. If you type a mesage in Chinese in NJStar, you can then select the text and right-click on it. You will see the option "Copy as GB". By selecting that option, you can then paste the text into the Yahoo! Mail window, where it will look like "ÄãºÃ...". Even if it looks like rubbish, that is the actual GB-encoded Chinese text, and you can send it like that. Your friends will see the text correctly when they get the email.

Hope this helps

[wix]

When receiving e-mail from friends in Taiwan I have to manually set the encoding to Big 5 to see the characters.

[csy]

Thanks for the comments.

Actually I do have Yahoo mail plus and have been using POP access to send out Chinese mail, but I was hoping to also have the option of sending Chinese mail from the webbrowser. It looks like there isn't any straightforward way of doing so.

I do hope Yahoo will implement this - it shouldn't be difficult, just a simple drop box to allow the user to choose the character encoding. I 've sent Yahoo feedback on this, but I'm not optimistic.

[horas]

*

Another workaround similar to what Jose had suggested would probably be using:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

choose: Chinese Tools

but I haven't tried it myself.

NB

Have any of you tried that method to post to forums with 'difficult' encoding settings? It should solve the problems of encodings, wouldn't it?