How to check if a .txt file is in ASCII or UTF-8 format in Windows environment?

I have converted a .txt file from ASCII to UTF-8 using UltraEdit. However, I am not sure how to verify if it is in UTF-8 format in Windows environment.

Thank you!

6 Answers

Open the file in Notepad. Click 'Save As...'. In the 'Encoding:' combo box you will see the current file format.

Open the file using Notepad++ and check the "Encoding" menu, you can check the current Encoding and/or Convert to a set of encodings available.

Text files in Windows don't have a format. There's an unofficial convention that if the file starts with the BOM codepoint in UTF-8 format that it's UTF-8, but that convention isn't universally supported. That would be the 3 byte sequence "\xef\xbf\xbe", i.e. ￾ in the Latin-1 character set.

Open it in a hex editor and make sure that the first three bytes are a UTF8 BOM (EF BB BF)

If you use Windows 10 and has Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), it can be easily done by typing "file " from the shell.

For example:

$ file code.cpp code.cpp: C source, UTF-8 Unicode (with BOM) text, with CRLF line terminators 

I had a directory of files that I wanted to check. I created an Excel macro to determine ANSI vs. UTF-8. This worked for me.

 Sub GetTextFileEncoding() Dim sFile As String Dim sPath As String Dim sTextLine As String Dim iRow As Integer 'Set Defaults and Initial Values iRow = 1 sPath = "C:textfiles\" sFile = Dir(sPath & "*.txt") Do While Len(sFile) > 0 'Get FileType 'Debug.Print sFile & " - " & FileEncodeType(sPath & sFile) 'Show on Excel Worksheet Cells(iRow, 1).Value = sFile Cells(iRow, 2).Value = FileEncodeType(sPath & sFile) 'Get next file sFile = Dir 'Increment Row iRow = iRow + 1 Loop End Sub Function FileEncodeType(sFile As String) As String Dim bEF As Boolean Dim bBB As Boolean Dim bBF As Boolean bEF = False bBB = False bBF = False Open sFile For Input As #1 If Not EOF(1) Then 'Read first line Line Input #1, textline 'Debug.Print textline For i = 1 To 3 'Debug.Print Asc(Mid(textline, i, 1)) & " - " & Mid(textline, i, 1) Select Case i Case 1 If Asc(Mid(textline, i, 1)) = 239 Then bEF = True End If Case 2 If Asc(Mid(textline, i, 1)) = 187 Then bBB = True End If Case 3 If Asc(Mid(textline, i, 1)) = 191 Then bBF = True End If Case 4 End Select Next End If Close #1 If bEF And bBB And bBF Then FileEncodeType = "UTF-8" Else FileEncodeType = "ANSI" End If End Function