Ever had this happen to you? Everything is going just fine and then all of the sudden you get a call from a client or co-worker saying their emails to you are bouncing? WHAT??! They’ve always received them before and you haven’t changed any settings or touched anything, even by accident that would disrupt the status quo right? (this is where you can fill in your own expletive). If this has happened to you, keep reading! If not, tuck this in the back of your head just in case it does happen to you!

Now that you know someone on your normal sender/recipient list is suddenly receiving an error message saying that “this recipient doesn’t accept emails in Non Western (Non Latin) character sets”, how do you fix it? What does THAT mean???? (and yes, you guessed it! Time for another %$)+%&%)

After months of hearing from trusted folks that their emails were bouncing and using a back up email address we finally found the source! I’m not a pro in this arena, so please bear with me if I use the wrong terminology! Lucky for me, my husband IS a pro in this arena and it even baffled him for some time. He had searched my email settings…nadda…message boards…nadda…checked with our provider…nadda…checked newsgroups…you guessed it…NADDA! He even asked his friends and still nothin’! (I feel like that Country song “My Give a Damn’s Busted”, but don’t get me started)

Generally when there are changes made, especially those that would affect the email defaults, you are informed from your provider or it’s proudly displayed on their site! Well, not this time, ladies and gentlemen! You can’t just scratch the surface, you have to really BLEED! Your answer most likely lies with the provider, as it did for me. Luckily it’s something I could even fix if it came right down to it!

Go to your provider’s website (in my case www.godaddy.com)
Sign in.
Check your Email Account Settings (if that isn’t available, Manage Account Settings or something similar to this)
Click on it.
Here you should see some options and/or boxes with specific information about the character sets; Western, Non Western, Latin, etc..

You want to make sure that your boxes are checked YES even if it doesn’t look like something you may need! You’ve always heard “Just say No”, but in this case Yes is the ticket! It immediately fixed the problem! Way too easy and a huge hassle when you have no idea why you can’t suddenly receive important emails!

Here is where I can say “I feel your pain”, but you’ll be back to normal in no time! If for some reason you can’t find the correct place to manage this via your provider CALL THEM! Give them the earful I wish I would have and then tell me all about it!!!!

Happy Settings from here on out!
And by the way, Merry Christmas and have a wonderful 2006!!!!!
Kelli Casey
kelli@kellicasey.com