Good day.
Probably, every PC user has faced a similar problem: you open an Internet page or a Microsoft Word document - and instead of text you see hieroglyphs (various "kryakozabry", unfamiliar letters, numbers, etc. (as in the picture on the left ...)).
It's good if this document (with hieroglyphs) is not very important to you, but if you need to read it ?! Quite often, similar questions and requests for help with the opening of such texts are asked to me. In this short article, I want to consider the most popular reasons for the appearance of hieroglyphs (of course, and eliminate them).
Characters in text files (.txt)
Most popular problem. The fact is that a text file (usually in txt format, but they are also formats: php, css, info, etc.) can be saved in different encodings.
Encoding- this is a set of characters necessary in order to fully ensure the writing of text in a specific alphabet (including numbers and special characters). More details on this here: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_Symbols
Most often, one thing happens: the document is simply opened in the wrong encoding, which causes confusion, and instead of the code of some characters, others will be called. Various incomprehensible symbols appear on the screen (see fig. 1) ...
Rice. 1. Notepad - encoding problem
How to deal with this?
In my opinion, the best option is to install an advanced notepad, such as Notepad ++ or Bred 3. Let's take a closer look at each of them.
Notepad ++
One of the best notebooks for both beginners and professionals. Pros: free program, supports Russian language, works very quickly, code highlighting, opening of all common file formats, a huge number of options allow you to customize it for yourself.
In terms of encodings, there is generally complete order here: there is a separate section "Encodings" (see Fig. 2). Just try changing ANSI to UTF-8 (for example).
After changing the encoding, my text document became normal and readable - the hieroglyphs were gone (see Fig. 3)!
Rice. 3. The text has become readable ... Notepad ++
Bred 3
Another great program designed to completely replace the standard notepad in Windows. It also “easily” works with many encodings, easily changes them, supports a huge number of file formats, and supports new Windows operating systems (8, 10).
By the way, Bred 3 helps a lot when working with "old" files saved in MS DOS formats. When other programs show only hieroglyphs, Bred 3 easily opens them and allows you to work with them calmly (see Fig. 4).
If, instead of text, hieroglyphs in Microsoft Word
The very first thing to pay attention to is the file format. The fact is that starting with Word 2007 a new format has appeared - "docx" (earlier it was just "doc"). Usually, new file formats cannot be opened in the "old" Word, but it sometimes happens that these "new" files are opened in the old program.
Just open the file properties and then look at the Details tab (like in Figure 5). This will tell you the file format (in Figure 5, the "txt" file format).
If the file format is docx - and you have an old Word (lower than 2007 version) - then just update Word to 2007 or higher (2010, 2013, 2016).
Next when opening the file note(by default, this option is always enabled, unless, of course, you have “don’t understand which assembly”) - Word will ask you again: in which encoding to open the file (this message appears for any “hint” of problems when opening a file, see Fig. . 5).
Rice. 6. Word - file conversion
Most often, Word automatically determines the desired encoding itself, but the text is not always readable. You need to set the slider to the desired encoding when the text becomes readable. Sometimes, you have to literally guess where the file was saved in order to read it.
Rice. 8.Browser detected the wrong encoding
To fix the display of the site: change the encoding. This is done in the browser settings:
- Google chrome: options (icon in the upper right corner) / advanced options / encoding / Windows-1251 (or UTF-8);
- Firefox: left ALT button (if you have turned off the top panel), then view / page encoding / select the one you want (most often Windows-1251 or UTF-8);
- Opera: Opera (red icon in the upper left corner) / page / encoding / select the one you want.
PS
Thus, in this article, the most common cases of the appearance of hieroglyphs associated with an incorrectly defined encoding were analyzed. With the help of the above methods, you can solve all the main problems with incorrect encoding.
I would be grateful for the additions on the topic. Good Luck 🙂
I saw something like this for the first time - files and folders from a flash drive disappeared, and instead of them there appeared files with incomprehensible names in the form of "kryakozyabriki", let's call them conventionally hieroglyphs.
The flash drive was opened using standard Windows tools and, alas, additionally, it did not give positive results.
All files on the flash drive are missing except one. Several files appeared with incomprehensible names: &, t, n- &, etc.
The files from the flash drive have disappeared, but Windows shows that the free space is taken. This suggests that although the files of interest to us are not displayed, they are located on the USB flash drive.
Although the files are gone, the space is taken. In a specific case, 817 MB are occupied
The first thought about the cause of what happened is the action of the virus. Earlier, when the virus, the file manager FAR manager was used, which, as a rule, sees all files (hidden and system). However, this time, FAR manager saw only what the standard Windows explorer did ...
Even FAR manager could not see "lost" files
Since Windows does not see the missing files, it does not roll the trick of changing file attributes using the command line and the command attrib -S -H / S / D.
What will Linux see?
In this situation, as an experiment, I decided to use a Linux-based operating system. In a specific case, a disk with the Ubuntu 10.04.3 operating system was used (more about Ubuntu and where to download it).
Important! There is no need to install Ubuntu on your computer - just boot from the CD, just like you do with.
After booting Ubuntu, the desktop will appear and you can work with folders and files in the same way as it happens in Windows.
As expected, Ubuntu saw more files compared to Windows.
Ubuntu also displays those files that were not visible from under Windows (clickable)
Then, in order not to bother with file attributes, we did some elementary steps: all displayed files were selected and copied to the local drive "D" (of course, you can copy the files to the system drive "C").
Now you can boot Windows again and check what happened.
Now Windows sees several Word files. Note that the filenames are also displayed correctly.
Alas, the problem was not solved, since there were clearly more files on the flash drive (judging by the volume of 817 MB) than we managed to pull out. For this reason, we will try to check the flash drive for errors.
Eliminating errors on a USB flash drive
To find and fix errors on disks, Windows has a standard utility.
Step 1. Right-click on the flash drive icon and select the "Properties" command.
Step 2. Go to the "Service" tab and click on the "Check" button.
Step 3. We click on the "Start" button.
After checking and correcting system errors, a corresponding message will appear.
Message: "Some bugs were found and fixed."
After eliminating the errors, the files with the hieroglyphs disappeared, and a hidden folder named FOUND.000 appeared in the root directory of the flash drive.
There were 264 files with the CHK extension inside the FOUND.000 folder. Files with the CHK extension can store fragments of files of various types extracted from hard disks and flash drives using the ScanDisk or CHKDISK utilities.
If all the files on the USB flash drive were of the same type, for example, Word documents with the docx extension, then select all files in the Total Commander file manager and press the key combination Ctrl + M (Files - Batch rename). We indicate which extension to look for and what to change it to.
In a specific case, I only knew that there are Word documents and files with Power Point presentations on the flash drive. It is very problematic to change extensions by scientific typing, so it is better to use specialized programs - they themselves will determine what type of data is stored in the file. One of these programs is a free utility that does not require installation on a computer.
We indicate the source folder (I dropped the CHK files to the hard drive). Next, I chose the option in which files with different extensions will be decomposed into different folders.
It remains to press "Start"
As a result of the utility operation, three folders appeared:
- DOC - with Word documents;
- JPG - with pictures;
- ZIP - with archives.
The contents of eight files remained unrecognized. However, the main task has been completed, Word documents and photographs have been restored.
The downside is that it was not possible to recover similar file names, so you will obviously have to tinker with renaming Word documents. As for the files with pictures, such names as FILE0001.jpg, FILE0002.jpg, etc. will also work.
I saw something like this for the first time - files and folders from a flash drive disappeared, and instead of them there appeared files with incomprehensible names in the form of "kryakozyabriki", let's call them conventionally hieroglyphs.
The flash drive was opened using standard Windows tools and the display of hidden files and folders was additionally enabled, alas, this did not give positive results.
The files from the flash drive have disappeared, but Windows shows that the free space is taken. This suggests that although the files of interest to us are not displayed, they are located on the USB flash drive.
The first thought about the cause of what happened is the action of the virus. Earlier, when the virus hid all files on a flash drive and turned folders into shortcuts, the FAR manager was used, which, as a rule, sees all files (hidden and system ones). However, this time, FAR manager saw only what the standard Windows explorer did ...
Since Windows does not see the missing files, it does not roll the trick of changing file attributes using the command line and the command attrib -S -H / S / D.
What will Linux see?
In this situation, as an experiment, I decided to use a Linux-based operating system. In a specific case, a disk with the Ubuntu 10.04.3 operating system was used (read more about Ubuntu and where to download it here).
Important! There is no need to install Ubuntu on your computer - just boot from the CD, just like you do from the Live CD.
After booting Ubuntu, the desktop will appear and you can work with folders and files in the same way as it happens in Windows.
As expected, Ubuntu saw more files compared to Windows.
Then, in order not to bother with file attributes, we did some elementary steps: all displayed files were selected and copied to the local drive "D" (of course, you can copy the files to the system drive "C").
Now you can boot Windows again and check what happened.
Alas, the problem was not solved, since there were clearly more files on the flash drive (judging by the volume of 817 MB) than we managed to pull out. For this reason, we will try to check the flash drive for errors.
Eliminating errors on a USB flash drive
To find and fix errors on disks, Windows has a standard utility.
Step 1. Click on the flash drive icon with the right mouse button and select the "Properties" command.
Step 2. Go to the "Service" tab and click on the "Check" button.
Step 3. Click on the "Start" button.
After checking and correcting system errors, a corresponding message will appear.
After eliminating the errors, the files with the hieroglyphs disappeared, and a hidden folder named FOUND.000 appeared in the root directory of the flash drive.
There were 264 files with the CHK extension inside the FOUND.000 folder. Files with the CHK extension can store fragments of files of various types extracted from hard disks and flash drives using the ScanDisk or CHKDISK utilities.
If all the files on the USB flash drive were of the same type, for example, Word documents with the docx extension, then select all files in the Total Commander file manager and press the key combination Ctrl + M (Files - Batch rename). We indicate which extension to look for and what to change it to.
In a specific case, I only knew that there are Word documents and files with Power Point presentations on the flash drive. It is very problematic to change extensions by scientific typing, so it is better to use specialized programs - they themselves will determine what type of data is stored in the file. One of such programs is the free utility unCHKfree (download 35 Kb), which does not require installation on a computer.
We indicate the source folder (I dropped the CHK files to the hard drive). Next, I chose the option in which files with different extensions will be decomposed into different folders.
As a result of the utility operation, three folders appeared:
The contents of eight files remained unrecognized. However, the main task has been completed, Word documents and photographs have been restored.
The downside is that it was not possible to recover similar file names, so you will obviously have to tinker with renaming Word documents. As for the files with pictures, such names as FILE0001.jpg, FILE0002.jpg, etc. will also work.
