SharePoint SPUtility.SendEmail() is scrambling unicode characters in subject line

Question

So, I'm using SharePoint's SPUtility.SendEmail() to send an email with non-ascii characters in the subject line. The problem is that the Icelandic character 'ð' is scrambled to '?'. This only happens in the subject line, the message body is fine.

The problem does not seem to be with the email client, since the problem appears both in Gmail and Lotus Notes.

The server's regional settings are set to Icelandic.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Have you tried testing your SMTP relay using something like Telnet or putting a file in the Pickup Folder with the troublesome charater to prove the problem is with SPUtility.SendMail() and not your SMTP relay?

Answer 2

I solved it, the outgoing email settings for the web application were set to the wrong character set.

In SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration, go to Application Management -> Web Application Outgoing E-Mail Settings, select the web application you want to change and set the character set as desired (in my case 1252 Western European)