Quoted-Printable Encoder / Decoder
Encode or decode MIME Quoted-Printable text and RFC 2047 =?UTF-8?Q?...?= email headers, in Q or Base64 encoding and any charset.
Quoted-Printable is how email carries accented letters, symbols and emoji through systems that only pass plain ASCII: each such byte becomes =XX (é is =C3=A9), a long line is folded with a trailing = (a soft line break), and a subject line wraps the same thing as =?UTF-8?Q?…?=.
Both boxes are live: type in either one and the other follows.
Handles UTF-8, soft line breaks, and =?UTF-8?Q?…?= email headers.
What Quoted-Printable does
Quoted-Printable is the MIME encoding that lets 8-bit data pass through mail systems that only guarantee 7-bit ASCII. Bytes that are already safe printable ASCII stay as themselves, while the equals sign, control characters, and every byte of a non-ASCII character become =XX using uppercase hexadecimal. Long lines are wrapped at 76 characters with a trailing equals sign, a soft line break that the decoder removes. Tick One line to leave the soft breaks out — what a subject line or a contact name needs — and the Line ending menu writes every break as LF, CRLF or CR.
Encode, decode, and read email headers
Switch to Decode to paste a raw email body or a subject such as =?UTF-8?Q?...?= and get readable text back. This tool handles both the body form and the RFC 2047 encoded-word header form, in Q or B (Base64) encoding and any charset, and it runs entirely in your browser so nothing is uploaded. Quoted-Printable does not say which charset its bytes are in, so the Character set menu names it, in both directions: UTF-8 by default, or EUC-KR, Windows-1252 and the others in the list — Caf=E9 read as Windows-1252 is Café — and a character the chosen charset has no bytes for is refused by name rather than written as a question mark. The lower box is live too: type or paste in it and the upper box follows, so both forms are on screen at once, and Copy link puts the text and the settings in the link it copies.
What it is for, and how it compares with Base64
Quoted-Printable is for text that is mostly plain ASCII with a few other characters in it — an English email with an accented name, a signature with a © — because the ASCII stays readable in the raw message and only the odd byte grows into =XX. Base64 is the other encoding MIME offers, made for attachments and other binary data: it turns every three bytes into four plain letters, digits or symbols whatever the bytes are, so it runs about a third longer than the original and none of it can be read by eye. For mostly-ASCII text Quoted-Printable is the shorter of the two; once a good share of the bytes are not ASCII — Korean, Chinese, Japanese, emoji — it triples each of those bytes, Base64 comes out shorter, and mail programs often switch to it. A message names the one it used in its Content-Transfer-Encoding header, and a subject line does it with the Q or B in =?UTF-8?Q?…?=; this page reads both forms in headers.
Frequently asked questions
What is a soft line break in Quoted-Printable?
An equals sign as the last character of a line marks a soft line break. It means the line was wrapped only to stay within 76 characters, so the decoder joins it to the next line and drops the marker. A real equals sign in the data is always written as =3D.
Can it decode =?UTF-8?Q? email subject lines?
Yes. In Decode mode it recognizes RFC 2047 encoded-words such as =?UTF-8?Q?...?= and =?UTF-8?B?...?=, converts underscores to spaces in the Q form, decodes Base64 in the B form, and applies the named charset such as UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1.
Can it write Quoted-Printable in a charset other than UTF-8, or on one line?
Yes. The Character set menu picks the bytes: encoding 안녕 as EUC-KR gives =BE=C8=B3=E7 rather than the UTF-8 bytes, and decoding reads the bytes in the charset you name, while an encoded-word such as =?ISO-8859-1?Q?…?= still uses the one it names. A character the chosen charset cannot hold is refused by name, not written as a question mark. In Encode mode, One line leaves out the soft line breaks and writes the text’s own line breaks as =0D and =0A, and Line ending chooses LF, CRLF or CR for every break the encoder writes.
Can I type in either box, or send a conversion as a link?
Yes. The lower box is editable too: typing in it runs the other direction and rewrites the upper box — Quoted-Printable typed under Encode is decoded above, text typed under Decode is encoded above — so both forms are on screen and live together. Encode and Decode choose which box holds the text, and carry the result across. Copy link, beside Download, puts the text, the direction, the character set, One line and the line ending in the link it copies, and a link opens on them; text too long for a link, such as a whole opened .eml, gets a note instead of the button.