Saving Files in "Unicode (Big-Endian)" Option

Unicode Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

∟Saving Files in "Unicode (Big-Endian)" Option

This section provides a tutorial example on how to save text files with Word by selecting the 'Unicode (Big-Endian)' encoding option on the file conversion dialog box.

In the next test, I want to try the save function with the "Unicode (Big-Endian)" option.

1. Run Word and open hello.utf-8 correctly with the Unicode (UTF-8) encoding option selected.

2. Click the File > "Save As" menu. The "Save As" dialog box comes up.

3. Enter word_utf-16be.txt as the new file name and select the "Plain Text (*.txt)" option in the "Save as Type" field.

4. Click the Save button. The File Conversion dialog box comes up.

5. Click the "Other encoding" radio button and select the "Unicode (Big-Endian)" option.

6. Click the OK button. Word saves the text to a new file named as: word_utf-16be.txt.

7. To see how my text is saved by Word, I need to run my HEX dump program on word_utf-16be.txt:

C:\herong\unicode>java HexWriter word_utf-16be.txt word_utf-16be.hex
Number of input bytes: 170

C:\herong\unicode>type word_utf-16be.hex
FEFF00480065006C006C006F00200063
006F006D007000750074006500720021
0020002D00200045006E0067006C0069
00730068000D000A753581114F60597D
FF010020002D002000530069006D0070
006C0069006600690065006400200043
00680069006E006500730065000D000A
96FB81664F60597DFE570020002D0020
0054007200610064006900740069006F
006E0061006C0020004300680069006E
006500730065000D000A

Very nice. This is a perfect UTF-16 encoding file using the Big-Endian with BOM format. Those leading 2 bytes represent the BOM flag, which is not part of the text.