Unreading text from text file

[Optical]

Hey all,

I have a text file but it's showing up pretty much garbage. My guess is the encoding. The extension is .txt so I tried opening using Word tried a file formats including Windows, MS-DOS, and a variety of foreign encodings but have not tried all possible countries.

Is there a quick way to find out the right encoding?

TIA.

 

[Drakkon]

textpad....when you open the file in that go to "View-Document Properties" and it should give you the code set and file type

 

[Optical]

Textpad shows it's ANSI - PC. Tried converting to DOS but it doesn't do anything. Is there a way to translate this? I assume it would be ASCII?

Thanks.

 

[notfred]

Just because it has ".txt" at the end doesn't make it a text file. You can rename an mp3 with a .txt extension plenty easily.

 

[Optical]

True but I know this file is a text file.

 

[DaveSimmons]

text files have no header / information block so no you can't tell from the file, you'll need to contact the place where you obtained the file.

Are you sure it isn't actually binary data encoded as text, as in the BASE64 encoding used for usenet and email (behind the scenes)?