Unreadable Notepad Doc

[Velvetee]

I have a Notepad document that is unreadable, just loads of little symbols and letters which make no sense. Is there a way of converting it to make it readable?

Thank you

[Ethel]

They are wingdings.

Open your notepad, copy and paste the document in to it, highlight all of it, and change the font to Times or similar

[Velvetee]

Thanks Ethel, unfortunately that did not work. They don't look like Wingdings, a variety of different letters too, lower and upper case all grouped together. Is there anyway of converting the doc to a Word doc?

[Mr-Tom]

You could try opening the document with WordPad instead of NotePad. Usually if a .txt file doesn't look right in one it will in the other.

Right click the .txt file and choose Open With...
If Wordpad isn't suggested then scroll down the list and select it...it's usually near the bottom if not the last option.

If it's not in the list then use Choose Program..., and navigate to C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories (for XP SP3), else search for it.

You can also choose to always use Wordpad to open this type of file should you wish.

Regards.

[smith134]

Your notepad file has been corrupted.
You need to scan your computer with good antivirus like AVG, McAfee, Norton etc. to prevent any other infection.

[fo3nix]

Are you sure the file was made with notepad?

Sounds to me like you're trying to open a binary file, such as a Microsoft Word document. As such, I'd go with Mr-Tom's suggestions.

[squarebear]

Yes this sounds like a word doc rather than a notepad file.

[ACtheTROLL]

where has it come from? and what OS created it

it's possible that it's
mac, linux, unix etc can use different character sets
hex ASCII, Intel Hex, and Motorola S, ANSI ASCII, IBM ASCII, EBCDIC, (Unicode)

winhex will read ... but it doesn't have a trial version

anyone know of an alternative?

[Velvetee]

Thanks everyone, unfortunately none of that works, I'm still getting this kind of thing in Word, Wordpad and Notepad

~�z�WX���i|��:@�+t�2�w��Pq�O�Q�����w�|�
o�&�v۪��j_A�zC4�<=���
�d�탂�N� LBl�ȸHn��d�l
��@s��c���h�&�F���Z��A�أQ�7���R�G"��%��,6˶S�C��Z��k�bZ���ѩ:o'�{�&s�8�`2�G%��<ZV����s��b �f��R �L�%ފ�^p�o+�{���X��6��¥��I��ş

I was sent this from a computer running Windows XP, I'm running Windows Vista, could that be why. I have no viruses and do regular scans. Is it maybe encrypted in some way?

[ACtheTROLL]

how big is the file?
what's it's extension? .txt .doc

could it be a file that's had it's extension changed to get round e-mail filters

not many allow .exe attachments ... quick fix is to rename setup.exe to setup.txt

[Velvetee]

Troll, the file is 111Kb and the file extension is .txt

Any other ideas, thanks

[ACtheTROLL]

111k is pretty big for a text file
Only thing I can suggest is back to the sender for another copy

[fo3nix]

Try renaming the file to .zip.

If that doesn't work (i.e., the zip program built into Vista can't unzip it), then ask the sender for another copy. Something's gone strange.

If you do ask for another copy, ask them to zip the file first. This can help with sending certain types of files, that can sometimes have their format messed up when going through email.