Opening UTF-16 Text Files

This section provides a tutorial example on how to open a UTF-16 (Little-Endian with BOM) text file with Excel correctly by selecting the 'Windows (ANSI)' encoding option on the Text Import Wizard dialog box.

In the previous section, we saved a Unicode text file in the Little-Endian with BOM format of UTF-16 encoding. Now I want to try to open it back into Excel.

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

2. Select the hello.utf-8 text file and click the Open button. The Text Import Wizard dialog box comes up automatically. Excel detected the encoding to be "Windows (ANSI)" and suggests you to use it to read the text file. See the correct text in the preview section in the picture below:

Excel Open UTF-16 File
Excel Open UTF-16 File

3. Click the Next button and finish the import process. My UTF-16 text file opens in Excel correctly.

Very nice. This proves that Word can open UTF-16 (Little-Endian with BOM) text file correctly if the "Windows (ANSI)" encoding option is selected.

If you select a different encoding, like (65000 : Unicode (UTF-7), the UTF-8 text file will be opened incorrectly. Try it out yourself.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Character Sets and Encodings

 ASCII Character Set and Encoding

 GB2312 Character Set and Encoding

 GB18030 Character Set and Encoding

 JIS X0208 Character Set and Encodings

 Unicode Character Set

 UTF-8 (Unicode Transformation Format - 8-Bit)

 UTF-16, UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE Encodings

 UTF-32, UTF-32BE and UTF-32LE Encodings

 Python Language and Unicode Characters

 Java Language and Unicode Characters

 Character Encoding in Java

 Character Set Encoding Maps

 Encoding Conversion Programs for Encoded Text Files

 Using Notepad as a Unicode Text Editor

 Using Microsoft Word as a Unicode Text Editor

Using Microsoft Excel as a Unicode Text Editor

 What Is Microsoft Excel

 Opening UTF-8 Text Files

 Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

 Opening UTF-16LE Text Files

 Saving UTF-8 Text Files

 Saving Files in "Unicode Text (*.txt)" Option

Opening UTF-16 Text Files

 Supported Save and Open File Formats

 Unicode Fonts

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB