How to edit Unicode text in Notepad++

notepadtext editingunicode

Sometimes I edit English text that includes Unicode characters. For some reason, on my PC, Notepad++ converts Unicode characters to ???'s thereby corrupting the text and losing all that data. I'm looking for a way to edit such text, while preserving Unicode characters. I'm using Consolas as my Font. If the font doesn't have all those characters, why should I lose the data when I copy the text out of Notepad++ (via Windows' clipboard)?

Best Answer

If the file is actually encoded in Unicode, Notepad++ should detect it automatically. The Consolas font works well for me. You can try one of these two menu options:

  • Encoding -> Encode in UTF-8
  • Encoding -> Convert to UTF-8

I'm pretty sure the first one will do what you want.