--- schema_version: "1" id: 9fddbc5b1b5870439b3c386fba54927d8b27eb886097dd62f7b0f2763e3f2b9c title: Prepare for Email Address Internationalization (EAI) collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/sales/264-0-0/emailadmin_eai_prepare.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_eai_prepare.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: b59f06638ee47e0d3cc3d4536dff75dac450c52514037ea0a54807c970c63350 description: Take these steps before activating Email Address Internationalization (EAI). Make sure that UTF-8 support exists throughout the email’s path, update your integrations to support Unicode characters, and adopt the latest API version. We also recommend that custom fields storing email addresses are of the Email field type. products: - Sales Cloud - Cross Cloud - Service Cloud Voice release: "264" --- # Prepare for Email Address Internationalization (EAI) Take these steps before activating Email Address Internationalization (EAI). Make sure that UTF-8 support exists throughout the email’s path, update your integrations to support Unicode characters, and adopt the latest API version. We also recommend that custom fields storing email addresses are of the Email field type. ### Required Editions
Available in: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience
Available in: All editions
## Make Sure That UTF-8 Support Exists Throughout the Email’s Path Salesforce’s EAI support lets you send emails from Salesforce using EAI email addresses. It’s only one part of the email’s journey, though. Activated email relays must also support UTF-8 encoding, and the recipient must be able to accept emails from UTF-8 encoded email addresses. To receive emails from UTF-8 encoded email addresses, your Email Service Provider (ESP) must support UTF-8 encoding. A relatively small percentage of ESPs provides UTF-8 support for email addresses. If you wish to receive emails from EAI email addresses, make sure that your ESP provides the required support before enabling EAI. Likewise, if you set up your Salesforce email to go through an email relay or send through Gmail or Office 365, those relay providers must also support UTF-8 if you want to send emails through them to EAI email addresses. If your email service provider or relay provider doesn't support UTF-8, you can only send emails to and receive emails from non-EAI email addresses. ## Update Your Integrations to Support Unicode Characters As part of the support for EAI, email addresses are stored and displayed using Unicode characters. Make sure that your integrations can pass and receive UTF-8 encoded characters. When EAI support is available, API queries can return UTF-8 data, regardless of your API version. ## Adopt the Latest API Version EAI requires API version 49.0 or later. ## Make Sure That All Fields Storing Email Addresses Have the Email Type If you're storing email addresses in a custom field with a type other than email, change the field type to Email. The Email type applies required validation rules and ensures proper storage space for the corresponding data. #### See Also - [Email Address Internationalization (EAI) Considerations](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_eai_considerations.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Understand the impact of Email Address Internationalization (EAI) on email address length and the number of allowed recipients per email. Review support limitations, best practices, and the changes to the character encoding returned through the API for email fields.") - [Send Email Through Email Relay](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_email_relay_overview.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Use your company’s email server to send email from Salesforce. Storing email locally helps you meet compliance goals, and your users can see the emails they’ve sent from Salesforce in their company email Sent Items folder. Also, routing all email through your own email servers prevents the appearance of email spoofing by Salesforce. Email spoofing is the forging of email headers to make messages appear as if they came from someone other than the original sender.") - [Send Through External Email Services](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sales.emailadmin_sendthroughexternal_overview.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Send email from Salesforce using your Google or Microsoft accounts. Then, to recipients, emails look like they were sent from those accounts, and you see those emails in your Gmail or Outlook Sent Items folder.") - [_Knowledge Article_: Salesforce Email Encoding Settings — UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, and Character Set Configuration](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000385454&type=1&language=en_US)