Computer tips for teachers and students of Japanese language
(For Windows and Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook,
Outlook Express and Internet Explorer)
On this page:
Also available:
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Solving
"Mojibake (that meaningless symbols)" problems |
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What is "mojibake"? |
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Sometimes you
encounter emails and web pages with a bunch of meaningless
letters/characters. This problem is called "mojibake" which
literally means "letters/characters transformed to some
other letters/characters". |
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How does that happen? |
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There are some
different types of code systems used for Japanese (and any
other language that use other letters/characters than Roman
alphabet) in the electronic world, and mojibake problems
seem to happen when the two sides (sender/writer and
receiver/reader) are using different code systems. Since
it's a very complicated technical problem, this page will
only show some basic solutions for the following three
occasions using MS Office applications (Outlook, Outlook
Express, Internet Explorer): |
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Case A - When you
receive a mojibake email
Case B - When you send an mojibake email
Case C - When mojibake occurs on a webpage you visit |
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Case A - When
you receive a mojibake email |
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If the message looks like
"?????????????????????", there is not much you can do about
it. Go to "A - Step 4"
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| A -
Step 1 |
Open the email
message. Click on
"View", click on "Encoding."
There are three encoding
options for Japanese:
"Japanese Auto-select"
"Japanese EUC"
"Japanese Shift_JIS."
Click on "Japanese
Auto-Select" first to see if the mojibake problem is solved.
If this doesn't work, try the
other two and see what happens.
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| A -
Step 2 |
If the
changing encoding options didn't work, press the reply
button and see if the mojibake problem is solved in the
reply message.
This method
seems to work well when the sender is using an Apple
computer and the receiver is using the web mail for hotmail
on Internet Explorer.
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| A -
Step 3 |
If "Step 1" and
"Step 2" didn't work, try the following:
Copy the text of
the message. Press
Ctrl
+
A keys (select all), then press
Ctrl + C
keys (copy).
Go
to "The
Web Kanzaki - 文字化けしたメールの修復" web page, and click on
"文字化けしている本文の修復" link on this page. (http://www.kanzaki.com/docs/jis-recover.html)
A new page will appear. Move
the cursor in the box, paste the copied text in the box
(press Ctrl + V keys) , and click on the "解読する(Decode)"
button.
If this didn't work, go back
to "The
Web Kanzaki - 文字化けしたメールの修復" web page, and click on
"Unicode文字参照になっている本文の解読" link.
A new page will appear. Move
the cursor in the box, paste the copied text in the box
(press Ctrl + V keys) , and click on the "解読する(Decode)"
button. |
| A -
Step 4 |
If the steps
above didn't work, then ask the sender to re-send the
message as an attached MS Word document. |
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Case B - When
you send a mojibake email |
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If someone receives a mojibake
email from you, you need to check your email settings.
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- Outlook users |
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Click on
"Tools", click on "Options", and click on the "Mail Format"
tab. In the "Mail
Format" tab, click on the "International Options" button
under "Message format".
The "International Options"
dialogue box will appear.
Under "Encoding Options",
make sure that "Auto select encoding for outgoing messages"
box is checked, and "Japanese (JIS)" is selected for
"Preferred encoding for outgoing messages".
Click "OK, and click "OK" |
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* If you don't
need the html function (changing the text appearance such as
font type, text color and size, embedding images in the
message, etc.), it's a good idea to set the format of the
message as "Plain Text" instead of "HTML" or "Rich Text".
There is a box for "Message Format" in the task bar. Click
on it and choose "Plain Text." A dialogue box will appear
and ask a question (Some of the features.......). Click on
the "Continue" button.
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- Outlook Express users |
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Click on
"Tools", click on "Options", and click on the "Send" tab.
In the "Send" tab, click on
the "Encode (or International Settings " button and check that "Japanese" is selected.
When you create a new message, you can also check the
encoding.
Click on "Format", click on
"Encoding" and check that "Japanese - JIS" is selected. |
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* If you don't
need the HTML function (changing the text appearance such as
font type, text color and size, embedding images in the
message, etc.) in your email message, it's a good idea to set the format of the
message as "Text" instead of "HTML" or "Rich Text".
In the new message screen, click on "Format", and click on
"Plain Text." |
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Case C - When
mojibake occurs on a webpage you visit |
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Click on "View",
click on "Encode", and click on "Japanese Auto-select."
If this doesn't work, then try the others ("Japanese EUC"
and "Japanese JIS"). |
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