non anscii characters in local part of recipeient address...

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liesal
Posts: 4
Joined: August 9th, 2017, 8:15 am

non anscii characters in local part of recipeient address...

Post by liesal »

In early june i sent a bulk email to many of my address book informing them of my out of town vacation. at the time and since them every email that i send where address is in address book i get a message box

there are non anscii characters in the local part of recipient address. this is not yet supported. please chnage address and try again. ok.

tHERE IS AN OK BUTTON. i HAVE TO HIT IT THREE TIMES. MESSAGE DISAPPEARS AND IT APPEARS MESSAGE DOES SEND AS IT IS IN MY SENT FOLDER. tHIS HAPPENS NOW FOR EVERY EMAIL I SEND UNLESS I MANUALLY TYPE IN AN EMAIL THAT IS NOT IN MY ADDRESS BOOK.

i AM RUNNING RELEASE 52.2.1. i SEE THIS HAS BEEN A THREAD IN THE PAST BUT TOPIC IS CLOSED AND WAS INFORMED TO START A NEW ONE.

iS THIS ON THE SOFTWARE END OR MY SERVER.


i APOLOGIZE FOR CAPS. dID NOT NOTICE TILL POST COMPLETED.
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by tanstaafl »

The base rfc's (Internet standards) for mail only require ascii, non-ascii support is added in optional rfc's.

Thunderbird supports non-ascii characters in the domain name, but not the username (local) portion of the email address. I don't know what percentage of mail servers support non-ascii characters (in the domain, local portion or both) but its optional. Some email providers such as a ISP tend to be very slow to adopt new standards. I still occasionally see threads where a ISP does not support avoiding sending passwords in the clear (via using SSL/TLS/StartTLS to make a secure connection or by sending a encrypted password). Adopting standards to avoid sending a password in the clear is far more mainstream than supporting non-ascii characters (at least in the USA).

SMTPUTF8 is the keyword returned to indicate that the enhanced SMTP server supports UTF-8 encoding in mailbox names and header fields, per RFC 6531.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=614930
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=127399
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_SMTP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_add ... nalization
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6531
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tanstaafl
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Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by tanstaafl »

By the way, there is a edit button in the upper right corner of your post than can be used to edit a message you posted. Its only visible if you are logged in.
liesal
Posts: 4
Joined: August 9th, 2017, 8:15 am

Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by liesal »

I am not sure i understand the response to my question.

Is the message I am getting due to my internet service provider? I can no loner send any email without hitting this ok button three times. My address book has not been changed by me in years so I guess I am puzzled why one day in June I start to receive this annoying message .
Is the issue with my ISP or Thunderbird
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tanstaafl
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Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by tanstaafl »

Any chance some of the contacts in your mailing list changed? It sounds like the problem is one or more recipients email addresses. AFAIK it is Thunderbird that is objecting, not your email providers smtp server. Another possibility is that there is a invalid address (non-ASCII) in your address book and for some unknown reason Thunderbird is complaining about it even when that contact is not being used. I suggest you also check whether you set a reply-to address that uses non-ascii characters.

I haven't heard anything about hitting a OK button three times to bypass the error. Do you know for sure whether Thunderbird actually sends email to all of the recipients when you do that? Its possible it just skips the invalid addresses and sends the rest.
mgagnonlv
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Joined: February 12th, 2005, 8:33 pm

Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by mgagnonlv »

The message you got is because you were trying to sent to "étranger@domaine.com"

As "tanstaafl" said, Thunderbird doesn't accept email addresses where the first part ("étranger" – also called the local part) has non ASCII characters. So these emails don't even go out to the world. Thunderbird stops them right there.
By the way, non-ASCII characters include accented letters (such as ç é ï, Greek or Cyrillic alphabet, etc.).

I theory, you could send such emails using another email software or the web interface (your browser). But even using that route to avoid Thunderbird, your email might have problems getting through because some servers along the way will block them, or even because spam-blocking companies will flag them as spam.
Michel Gagnon
Montréal (Québec, Canada)
liesal
Posts: 4
Joined: August 9th, 2017, 8:15 am

Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by liesal »

I have contacted my ISP and they say the issue is either with thunderbirdf or my address book. I have manually reviewed my address book and with the exception of finding a . after a com i found nothing unusual.
I really need to get rid of this annoying message. Thought?
The only time i dont get the message if i type in a address not in my address book, very rare but it happens. SO it leads me to think there is something in my address book . ANd even if i send to one person I still get the message...
I thought of deleting thunderbird and reloading but thats a lot of work for something I am not sure is really a thunderbird direct issue.

I have been reviewing some older treads on this very issue and could be.

when i sent the bulk email I might have included persons with no email address. Some comment about a bug in thunderbird but why is this back in release 52?
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tanstaafl
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Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by tanstaafl »

I suggest you replace your address books.

"I thought of deleting thunderbird and reloading but thats a lot of work"
Uninstalling and re-installing using a fresh copy of the setup program is no big deal since you would reuse the existing profile. It is stored in a separate directory tree and doesn't get deleted when you re-install. If you're worried, back up your profile before uninstalling.
Mozilka
Posts: 1
Joined: November 9th, 2017, 8:39 pm

Re: non anscii characters in local part of recipeient addres

Post by Mozilka »

The reason this can be happening is that there is a hidden symbol in the email address, don't ask how it got there, it just does. The reason I know is that I simply copied and pasted the email from Thunderbird into a blank Word page, and the symbol appeared, I then deleted it, recopied the clean email address and pasted into Thunderbird. Problem Solved.
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