Frequently asked questions

How do I make IDN (domain names containing national characters) work with email?

There are currently few email clients supporting national characters in domain names. We have listed those we know about here:

• Microsoft Outlook 2007 or newer
• Apple Mail (in MacOS 10.5 Leopard or newer)
• Mozilla Thunderbird 24.* or newer
• iPhone Mail
• Opera 9 or newer
• Mutt 1.5.11 or newer

We know that these programs have problems with IDN:

Program	Problem
Windows Mail (Vista)	Error message when sending.
Windows Live Mail (XP/Vista)	Error message when sending.
Windows Live Hotmail	Error message when sending.
Samsung Galaxy (Android)	Error message when sending.
Microsoft Entourage	Doesn't recognise as valid e-mail address.
Thunderbird 17.* and older	Deletes national characters in the domain name before sending the email. Email attempted sent to e.g. jack@hørnåher.com, is sent to jack@hrnher.com.
No Gnus v0.6, Gnus v5.10.6 and older	Sends without encoding, generates an error message from the mail server.
Mutt 1.4.2.1 and older	Sends without encoding, generates an error message from the mail server.

In programs not supporting IDN, you have to use the encoded variant of the domain name. For example, æøå.no is encoded as xn--5cab8c.no. The encoded variant is displayed in parantheses for each domain when logged in at www.domainnameshop.com.

Note! This does not mean that the programs support national characters in the part of the address before the @ character! Such functionality is yet to be supported.