Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

Unicode Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

∟Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

This section provides a tutorial example to prove that Excel can not open a UTF-16BE text file. Its Text Import Wizard only supports UTF-7 and UTF-8 encodings.

Now let's try to use Excel to open the UTF-16BE text file, hello.utf-16be, created from the previous chapter.

1. Run Excel and click menu File > Open. The Open file dialog box comes up.

2. Select the hello.utf-16be text file and click the Open button. A warning message dialog box comes up:

3. Not too bad. The warning message says: "This file is not in a recognized format. ... If you still want to see what text is contained in the file, click OK. Then click Finish in the Text Import Wizard."

4. Ok, let's try to the Text Import Wizard. But Excel does not provide the Unicode Big-Endian encoding in the "File origin" list. It only provides "65000 : Unicode (UTF-7)" and "65001 : (UTF-8)".