The situation is the following: I often want to open the source (HTML)
text of an Outlook (2003) message that contains multibyte characters
such as Japanese text. This will open in Notepad, but in default ANSI
mode, and the text appears as "mojibake" garbage characters.

Is there a way to direct Notepad to open in Unicode mode, so that
multibyte characters appear unbroken?

(I was hoping that setting
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad\lfCha rSet to 1 or 2 would
change that behavior, but it does not.)

I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays
source text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that
nobody knows how to do that.

"Pat Willener" <nobody@devnull.spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:ec6DoUBkJHA.6124@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> The situation is the following: I often want to open the source (HTML)
> text of an Outlook (2003) message that contains multibyte characters such
> as Japanese text. This will open in Notepad, but in default ANSI mode, and
> the text appears as "mojibake" garbage characters.
>
> Is there a way to direct Notepad to open in Unicode mode, so that
> multibyte characters appear unbroken?
>
> (I was hoping that setting
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad\lfCha rSet to 1 or 2 would
> change that behavior, but it does not.)
>
> I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays source
> text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that nobody knows
> how to do that.

If your file was saved in Unicode format and if its first two bytes are FF
FE then notepad.exe will automatically open in Unicode mode. What are the
first two bytes in your file?
1390:0100 FF FE 54 00 68 00 65 00-20 00 71 00 75 00 69 00 ..T.h.e.
..q.u.i.
1390:0110 63 00 6B 00 20 00 62 00-72 00 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 c.k.
..b.r.o.w.n.
1390:0120 20 00 66 00 6F 00 78 00-69 6E 20 34 33 2F 35 30 .f.o.x.in
43/50

Pat Willener wrote:

> I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays
> source text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that
> nobody knows how to do that.

1. You could change the extension on the email or copy there of to HTM and
set Frontpage or whatever as default for that extension. Of course, setting
Frontpage as the default for that extension would be a nuisance when using
other HTM documents so...

2. You could create a new extension, set it to use Frontpage and change your
email to *that* extension or...

3. Just use "open with"

--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
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Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
> "Pat Willener" <nobody@devnull.spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:ec6DoUBkJHA.6124@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> The situation is the following: I often want to open the source (HTML)
>> text of an Outlook (2003) message that contains multibyte characters such
>> as Japanese text. This will open in Notepad, but in default ANSI mode, and
>> the text appears as "mojibake" garbage characters.
>>
>> Is there a way to direct Notepad to open in Unicode mode, so that
>> multibyte characters appear unbroken?
>>
>> (I was hoping that setting
>> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Notepad\lfCha rSet to 1 or 2 would
>> change that behavior, but it does not.)
>>
>> I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays source
>> text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that nobody knows
>> how to do that.
>
> If your file was saved in Unicode format and if its first two bytes are FF
> FE then notepad.exe will automatically open in Unicode mode. What are the
> first two bytes in your file?
> 1390:0100 FF FE 54 00 68 00 65 00-20 00 71 00 75 00 69 00 ..T.h.e.
> .q.u.i.
> 1390:0110 63 00 6B 00 20 00 62 00-72 00 6F 00 77 00 6E 00 c.k.
> .b.r.o.w.n.
> 1390:0120 20 00 66 00 6F 00 78 00-69 6E 20 34 33 2F 35 30 .f.o.x.in
> 43/50

The "file" unfortunately is not a file, but the body text of the HTML
Outlook message, which usually starts with '<!DOCTYPE ...'.

dadiOH wrote:
> Pat Willener wrote:
>
>> I have also asked in the Outlook group if the program that displays
>> source text could be changed (e.g. to Frontpage), but it seems that
>> nobody knows how to do that.
>
> 1. You could change the extension on the email or copy there of to HTM and
> set Frontpage or whatever as default for that extension. Of course, setting
> Frontpage as the default for that extension would be a nuisance when using
> other HTM documents so...
>
> 2. You could create a new extension, set it to use Frontpage and change your
> email to *that* extension or...
>
> 3. Just use "open with"

Thank you for your suggestion. A bit complicated, and does not work with
Frontpage, but it *does* work with Word, when I specify the correct
encoding to open it with.

I do not need this very often, so your suggestion will do nicely.