Text Encoding Inspector
Find out which character encoding a text file uses, preview it in others, repair “é”-style mix-ups and save it as UTF-8.
Drop a text file
Find out which encoding it uses, preview it in others, repair mixed-up characters and save it as UTF-8.
About this tool
Drop a text file to find out which encoding it uses: UTF-8, UTF-16, Windows-1252, Shift_JIS, GB18030 and many more. A byte order mark settles it; otherwise the bytes are checked against each encoding and ranked by how well they fit.
Encodings can’t be known for certain from bytes alone, so you choose: compare the lines where the candidates disagree, preview the whole text in any encoding with invalid bytes marked, and pick the one that reads correctly.
It also repairs the common mix-up where UTF-8 text was read as Windows-1252 and saved again, turning “Café” back into “Café”, only where the repair is unambiguous. Save the result as UTF-8, with or without a byte order mark and with the line endings you want.