Decode quoted-printable

Worked example

Quoted-printable represents UTF-8 bytes using printable ASCII and =HH hexadecimal escapes as described in RFC 2045. Convert locally in your browser. For example, entering "Caf=C3=A9!" produces "Café!". Compare both sides character by character; the visible spelling can hide different bytes or combining marks. In this direction the encoded representation becomes readable text. Paste the complete sequence, including any padding or escape signs, and check the decoded characters against the source system. A syntactically valid encoded string can still contain bytes that are not valid UTF-8 text.

How the representation works

Quoted-printable is a MIME transfer encoding defined by RFC 2045. Printable ASCII may pass through, while a byte can be written as an equals sign followed by two hexadecimal digits. UTF-8 letters with accents therefore often become several escaped bytes; an equals sign itself becomes =3D. A soft line break consists of = followed by CRLF and contributes no content when decoded. This tool escapes spaces and tabs, while text line breaks become hard CRLF. Lone CR or LF inputs are normalized to the MIME canonical form. Email bodies can also contain hard line breaks, while encoded email headers use a related but different Q notation. Do not treat a quoted-printable body as an HTML or URL encoding. Quoted-printable represents UTF-8 bytes using printable ASCII and =HH hexadecimal escapes as described in RFC 2045.

A text transformation has a direction. First identify whether your source is readable Unicode text, a list of bytes, code points or an already encoded string. Paste one short value whose meaning you know, inspect the result and only then process a larger input. Keep a copy of the source. An encoded sequence can be reversible while still revealing every original byte to anyone who knows the format; encoding alone is not a privacy measure. Processing runs in this browser, so the converter does not send your pasted content to a conversion server. The result still becomes sensitive if you copy it into a shared document, issue tracker or URL.

Limits and reliable use

This is UTF-8 quoted-printable with soft lines. Text line breaks use canonical CRLF, so lone CR or LF is normalized; it is not an email header Q-encoder. Use the exact alphabet, byte encoding and normalization form required by the receiving system. Similar looking formats are not automatically compatible. A decoded string can contain markup or control characters and must be treated as untrusted input by the next application. A valid conversion also does not prove that the data is authorized, safe or semantically correct. Try a round trip when the operation is intended to be reversible, and compare Unicode code points or UTF-8 bytes if two strings look equal but fail an exact comparison. For records that will be stored or signed, document the transformation as part of the data contract rather than relying on a visual preview.