Quoted-Printable Decoder
Decode quoted-printable email body text into readable characters. Choose the original charset and save the result as UTF-8 text.
Paste the encoded body of an email. Decode =XX bytes and soft line breaks into readable text, entirely on your device.
Body text only, not encoded Subject headers. Input limit: 1,000,000 characters.
Saved as UTF-8 text. HTML is shown as text and never executed.
How to decode quoted-printable text
Quoted-printable represents bytes with an equals sign and two hexadecimal digits. Decoding recovers those bytes; the character set then determines their meaning. Paste the encoded body only, excluding the email's headers and MIME boundary lines.
- Paste the quoted-printable body, or choose Try an example.
- Select the charset declared in the original Content-Type header and choose Decode text.
- Review the result and any warnings, then download the decoded text as a UTF-8 TXT file.
Common quoted-printable examples
| Encoded input | Decoded text | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| price=3D20 | price=20 | =3D is the byte for an equals sign. |
| caf=C3=A9 | café | The two escaped bytes form é in UTF-8. |
| hello=20world | hello world | =20 is an explicitly encoded space. |
| first_name | first_name | Underscores remain literal in body text. |
A soft line break joins two physical lines
Before:
A long line con=
tinues here.
After:
A long line continues here.Choosing UTF-8 or another character set
Look for a Content-Type header such as text/plain; charset=UTF-8 in the original email part. UTF-8 is the default here. Other available choices include Windows-1252 / ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, Shift JIS and GB18030 / GBK. Use the value associated with that body part, since different parts can declare different charsets.
For example, café is caf=C3=A9 in UTF-8, while the final character can be =E9 in Windows-1252. The byte decoding step alone cannot decide which one was intended. An unsupported charset needs another decoder or a fresh export from the original application; guessing can produce readable-looking but incorrect text.
Email body text and encoded Subject headers
A Subject such as =?UTF-8?Q?caf=C3=A9?= is an encoded header word, with its own wrapper and underscore rules. This decoder handles quoted-printable bodies only. Use the Email view in MIME structure viewer to read decoded subject and address fields.
If you see Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64, this is also the wrong decoder for that part. The MIME viewer can identify the transfer encoding in a complete EML file and download the corresponding decoded part.
Quoted-printable decoding questions
Why does =C3=A9 become é?
Those two byte escapes encode é in UTF-8. Quoted-printable recovers the bytes; the selected character set determines which characters they represent.
Does this decode Subject headers such as =?UTF-8?Q?...?=
No. RFC 2047 encoded header words use different rules, including underscore handling. Open the complete EML in MIME structure viewer and use its Email view to read decoded headers. In this body decoder, underscores remain unchanged.
What happens to invalid sequences?
Malformed equals sequences are kept literally and reported as warnings. Text that cannot be decoded in the selected character set produces an error instead of silently replacing characters.
Why did spaces disappear at the end of a line?
Unencoded trailing spaces and tabs can be added during transport and are removed under quoted-printable rules. Encoded spaces such as =20 are retained.
Will decoded HTML run in the browser?
No. Output is displayed in a plain-text field and downloaded as TXT. Scripts and HTML tags are not executed.
What is the input limit?
You can decode up to 1,000,000 characters at a time. The result is shown as text and can be saved as UTF-8 TXT; it is not added to a mailbox.
Does my data leave my device?
Your selected files and pasted text are processed in your browser, without being uploaded to EMLKit. Remove the input or leave the page to clear the current workspace. Ordinary page requests still reach the site host. Read about file handling.