Mail is archived in the same format that it is sent. I don't think you can change that. But if you always want UTF-8 charset and 8bit content transfer encoding I think these will do it: (setq mm-body-charset-encoding-alist '((utf-8 . 8bit)) mm-coding-system-priorities '(utf-8)) (add-to-list 'mm-content-transfer-encoding-defaults '("text/.*" 8bit)) -- /// Teemu Likonen - .-.. // // PGP: 4E10 55DC 84E9 DFF6 13D7 8557 719D 69D3 2453 9450 ///