Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook

mhearse has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to send an email, which is html with utf8 encoded text. The following method workds for all mail clients except Microsoft Outlook. In outlook, I get the usual garbage where French accents should be. Does anyone know what could be wrong?

use strict;
use MIME::Lite;

my $contents = <<EOT;
Hello there!
EOT

my $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
    From    => 'test@mydomain.com',
    To      => 'test@yourdomain.com',
    Subject => 'Test Message',
    Type    => 'text/html',
    Data    => $contents,
);

$msg->attr('content-type.charset' => 'UTF8');
$msg->send();
[download]

Comment on Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook Download Code

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Re: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by almut (Canon) on May 05, 2008 at 23:49 UTC
Have you also tried "UTF-8" (with a dash)? Normally, applications are rather forgiving as to the spelling, but who knows... (Just a wild guess.)	[reply]
Re^2: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by mhearse (Chaplain) on May 06, 2008 at 00:29 UTC
Wow! That worked. I should have expected as much from Outlook. Thanks for your post.	[reply]
Re^3: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by ikegami (Patriarch) on May 06, 2008 at 02:01 UTC
uh? Outlook actually did it right. The encoding is called UTF-8, not UTF8.	[reply]
Re^4: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by mhearse (Chaplain) on May 06, 2008 at 03:11 UTC
Re^5: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by Anonymous Monk on May 06, 2008 at 12:17 UTC
Re: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by pc88mxer (Vicar) on May 05, 2008 at 23:26 UTC
Update: Ok, I've read your question a little more carefully, and realize that you are only having problems with MS Outlook, so maybe this doesn't apply. Still, my recollection is that `MIME::Lite` is not what I call 'Unicode clean' - you need to pass it a byte string that contains the message encoded in the desired character set. Original response: I bet `$content` contain code-points and not a UTF8 byte stream. Try this: `use Encode; my $msg = MIME::Lite->new( ... Data => encode('utf8', $contents), );` [download] My recollection is that `MIME::Lite` doesn't perform any character encoding of the message even when you specify the `content-type.charset` attribute.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Send utf8 encoded messages to MS Outlook by almut (Canon) on May 05, 2008 at 23:35 UTC
I bet `$content` contain code-points and not a UTF8 byte stream. But why would that work with all mail clients except Outlook, then? (Note: I hadn't seen your update before I posted...)	[reply] [d/l]