Office 2007 Bible

Understanding and Choosing Text Encoding in Word

Behind the scenes, applications identify each character (letter, number, punctuation, or symbol) that you type as a numeric code. Each language uses its own encoding system, so character 232 in one language encoding system looks drastically different from character 232 in another language encoding system. The Unicode encoding system encompasses the characters in the most common language encoding systems in use. That means that as long as a document is saved with Unicode encoding, the default in Word, chances are you’ll be able to open and view it.

If you have instances when Word documents open as funny, unreadable garbage characters, the document may be using an encoding scheme that Word doesn’t recognize by default. In such a case, you can set up Word to prompt you to confirm encoding when you open a file. To do so:

1.	With the garbled file open in Word, choose Office Button Word Options.
2.	Click Advanced in the list at the left.
3.	Scroll down and, under General, click the Confirm File Format Conversion on Open checkbox.
4.	Click OK to apply your changes.

You can then close and reopen the file, and a Convert File dialog box should appear and prompt you to select the required encoding scheme.

If you need to apply particular encoding to a file that you’re saving, you can do so to ensure that any recipient of the file will be able ...