HOW TO: Permit Non-UTF-8 Mail Clients to View Messages that Are Sent from Exchange 2000

When a user in your Exchange organization sends an e-mail message to a recipient outside the organization, the recipient may use a client computer that cannot read the message. If the recipient uses an e-mail client that cannot understand Unicode Translation Format-8 (UTF-8), the recipient cannot view a message that is sent by the user in your Exchange 2000 organization. The recipient cannot view the message because Exchange 2000 uses Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later to open Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) and send the message.

Permit Non-UTF-8 Mail Clients to View Messages Sent from Exchange 2000

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

To resolve this issue, turn off the feature to use regional characters and encode e-mail by using a set of alternative character sets.

To encode e-mail by using a set of alternative character sets, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services.
2. Right-click the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service, and then click Stop.
3. Right-click World Wide Web Publishing Service, and then click Stop.
4. Click Start, and then click Run.
5. In the Open box, type regedit.
6. Locate the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ MSExchangeWEB\OWA\UseAltRegionalCharset
7. Right-click UseAltRegionalCharset, and then click Modify.
8. In the Base group box, click Hexidecimal.
9. In the Value Data box, type 0x1, and then click OK.
10. On the Registry menu, click Exit.
11. In Administrative Tools, restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service.
12. In Administrative Tools, restart World Wide Web Publishing Service.

When you set this registry key, e-mail messages that are composed by using any version of Internet Explorer use the following character sets:

• Korean: euc_kr
• Japanese: iso-2022-jp (JIS)
• Western Europe: iso-8859-1
• Russian: koi8-r
• Central Europe: iso-8859-2

If you do not set this registry key, and the feature to use regional characters is turned on, e-mail messages that are composed by using Internet Explorer 5.01 and later use UTF-8 character sets. E-mail messages that are composed by using Internet Explorer 5.01 or earlier use the following character sets:

• Korean: KS_C_5601-1987
• Japanese: shift_jis
• Western Europe: windows-1252
• Russian: windows-1251
• Central Europe: windows-1250

NOTE: If the feature to use regional characters is turned on (the UseRegionalCharset registry key REG_DWORD value is set to -1) and you set the registry key to encode e-mail by using alternative character sets (the UseAltRegionalCharset registry key REG_DWORD value is set to 0x1), the alternative character sets take precedence.

Troubleshooting

• If you only turn off the feature to use regional character sets, the e-mail message can be viewed by e-mail clients that do not understand UTF-8; however, the text is not readable.
• If you turn off the feature to use regional character sets and then specify which alternative character sets to use, the e-mail message can be viewed by e-mail clients that do not understand UTF-8. The original text and formatting is retained.
• By default, the feature to use regional character sets is turned off in Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 1 (SP1).
• If you want recipients to view e-mail messages that are sent by OWA users in your organization and you want to retain the text formatting, you must encode the e-mail messages by using a set of alternative character sets.

For additional information about how to turn off the feature to use regional character sets if you have not upgraded to SP1, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: