Forum Discussion
spacelizard
Feb 13, 2025Copper Contributor
[SEMI-CRITICAL] Outlook rules aren't working when email encoding system is different
(First, note that I am a Korean, and my report may use a different term for the system because it's tedious to figure out the original term for what I am using. I believe you know the vibe I am talking about.)
I figured using different character encoding system may result in failing outlook rules working. Basically, it appears Outlook is using UTF-8 based, but sometimes emails from other organisations use different. Let me show 2 receiver cases:
- To: =?utf-8?B?7ZmN6ri464+Z?= <johndoe@secret.secret>
- To: =?ks_c_5601-1987?B?yKux5rW/?= <johndoe@secret.secret>
This is what you can see from an email header, and left encoded characters are a name of a person, and obviously right bracket ones are their email. You can see it uses different encoding system. Both are encoded from "홍길동" (this is identical to a random guy name as much as how john doe is.) We can guess the name of this outlook user is obviously "홍길동" and their email address is johndoe@secret.secret
When you choose a rule [When an email has my name], the rule system will only work to the first case, the UTF-8 encoded one. It appears the rule [When an email has my name] only checks if an email has "?utf-8?B?7ZmN6ri464+Z?", but doesn't check "?ks_c_5601-1987?B?yKux5rW/?". However, both cases should work because both are their name.
The only solution for this is adjusting senders' email system to use UTF-8 only, but that is not possible.
Thus it fails checking those conditions. I am pretty sure this is why people have been complaining outlook rules doesn't work for years.
I want rules having more possible case checks... but I have no idea where I can suggest this.
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