Encode Quoted Printable
Encode text as Quoted-Printable with UTF-8 =XX hex codes.
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About this tool
Encodes text as Quoted-Printable, the format email uses to carry non-ASCII characters through systems that expect plain ASCII. Printable ASCII characters and spaces stay as they are. The equals sign, accented letters and other characters become =XX hex codes using the UTF-8 bytes of the character (é becomes =C3=A9). A space or tab at the end of a line is encoded too, so mail systems cannot trim it. Your line breaks are kept as real line breaks, and long lines are cut with a soft line break (an equals sign at the end of the line) so that no line is longer than 76 characters, as RFC 2045 requires. The Quoted-Printable decoder removes the soft breaks again. It runs in your browser.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text.
- Copy the encoded output.
- Use it where a Quoted-Printable string is required.
Example
café = 1
caf=C3=A9 =3D 1
How quoted-printable encoding works
- Plain ASCII stays readable
- Letters, digits, punctuation, spaces and tabs are written as they are, which is why quoted-printable text stays mostly readable.
- Everything else becomes =XX
- Each byte of a non-ASCII character is written as = followed by two hex digits. In UTF-8, é is two bytes, so it becomes =C3=A9.
- The equals sign
- Because = starts a code, a literal = is written as =3D.
- Soft line breaks
- Lines may be at most 76 characters. A longer line is cut, and an = at the end of a line marks a break that a decoder removes.
Quoted-printable or Base64?
Both let email carry text that is not plain ASCII. Quoted-printable suits text that is mostly ASCII, such as English or most European languages, because it stays readable and adds little size. Base64 suits binary files and text that is mostly non-ASCII, where quoted-printable would turn almost every character into codes. In a MIME message, the encoding is named in the part's headers, together with the character set:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Decoding and email headers
To turn quoted-printable back into text, use Decode Quoted Printable. Email headers such as Subject use a related form called Q encoding (RFC 2047), written like =?UTF-8?Q?caf=C3=A9?=, where an underscore stands for a space. This tool produces body encoding, not header encoded-words. The Email Header Decoder decodes encoded words in the headers it shows.
Common problems
- There are equals signs at the end of some lines
- Those are soft line breaks. They mark a place where a long line was cut to stay under 76 characters, and a decoder joins the two parts back together.
- Line breaks and CRLF
- Your line breaks are kept as typed (a plain line feed). A MIME email body uses CRLF between lines, which mail libraries add when the message is sent.
- Spaces at the end of a line
- A trailing space or tab is written as =20 or =09 so that it survives mail systems that trim line ends.
Frequently asked questions
Which character set does it use?
UTF-8. Text encoded here must be labelled charset=UTF-8 in the email. Older mail in ISO-8859-1 encodes é as =E9 instead.
Why is a space at the end of a line shown as =20?
Some mail systems strip spaces at line ends. Encoding the last space or tab keeps it.