Can I open Notepad in Unicode mode?

P

Pat Willener

The situation is the following: I often want to open the source (HTML)
text of an Outlook (2003) message that contains multibyte characters
such as Japanese text. This will open in Notepad, but in default ANSI
mode, and the text appears as "mojibake" garbage characters.

Is there a way to direct Notepad to open in Unicode mode, so that
multibyte characters appear unbroken?

(I was hoping that setting
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad\lfCharSet to 1 or 2 would
change that behavior, but it does not.)

I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays
source text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that
nobody knows how to do that.
 
P

Pegasus \(MVP\)

Pat Willener said:
The situation is the following: I often want to open the source (HTML)
text of an Outlook (2003) message that contains multibyte characters such
as Japanese text. This will open in Notepad, but in default ANSI mode, and
the text appears as "mojibake" garbage characters.

Is there a way to direct Notepad to open in Unicode mode, so that
multibyte characters appear unbroken?

(I was hoping that setting
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad\lfCharSet to 1 or 2 would
change that behavior, but it does not.)

I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays source
text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that nobody knows
how to do that.

If your file was saved in Unicode format and if its first two bytes are FF
FE then notepad.exe will automatically open in Unicode mode. What are the
first two bytes in your file?
1390:0100 FF FE 54 00 68 00 65 00-20 00 71 00 75 00 69 00 ..T.h.e.
..q.u.i.
1390:0110 63 00 6B 00 20 00 62 00-72 00 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 c.k.
..b.r.o.w.n.
1390:0120 20 00 66 00 6F 00 78 00-69 6E 20 34 33 2F 35 30 .f.o.x.in
43/50
 
D

dadiOH

Pat said:
I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays
source text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that
nobody knows how to do that.

1. You could change the extension on the email or copy there of to HTM and
set Frontpage or whatever as default for that extension. Of course, setting
Frontpage as the default for that extension would be a nuisance when using
other HTM documents so...

2. You could create a new extension, set it to use Frontpage and change your
email to *that* extension or...

3. Just use "open with"

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
P

Pat Willener

Pegasus said:
If your file was saved in Unicode format and if its first two bytes are FF
FE then notepad.exe will automatically open in Unicode mode. What are the
first two bytes in your file?
1390:0100 FF FE 54 00 68 00 65 00-20 00 71 00 75 00 69 00 ..T.h.e.
.q.u.i.
1390:0110 63 00 6B 00 20 00 62 00-72 00 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 c.k.
.b.r.o.w.n.
1390:0120 20 00 66 00 6F 00 78 00-69 6E 20 34 33 2F 35 30 .f.o.x.in
43/50

The "file" unfortunately is not a file, but the body text of the HTML
Outlook message, which usually starts with '<!DOCTYPE ...'.
 
P

Pat Willener

dadiOH said:
1. You could change the extension on the email or copy there of to HTM and
set Frontpage or whatever as default for that extension. Of course, setting
Frontpage as the default for that extension would be a nuisance when using
other HTM documents so...

2. You could create a new extension, set it to use Frontpage and change your
email to *that* extension or...

3. Just use "open with"

Thank you for your suggestion. A bit complicated, and does not work with
Frontpage, but it *does* work with Word, when I specify the correct
encoding to open it with.

I do not need this very often, so your suggestion will do nicely.
 

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