Encoding

Text can be encoded in multiple ways. Most (older) textfiles use an encoding named ANSI, which has room for a limited amount of different characters, but is often sufficient to display all the text. However, Unicode encodings allow for a much richer amount of characters, allowing a single file to contain many languages at once, at the cost of an increase in filesize. Notepad++ will automatically try to detect the encoding used when opening a file, but allows you to change it when editing it. To simply change the displayed encoding (without modifying the actual text), select one of the Format->Encode in options from the Format menu. The convert the text to a certain encoding, select one of the Format->Convert to options in the format menu.

It can happen that a file is saved with a certain encoding, but upon reopening it in Notepad++ it is detected with another encoding. This is a technical limitation and happens because sometimes the resulting file will not differ even though different encodings are used. This is most noticeable if the file is saved without a special BOM (Byte Order Mark) indicating the used encoding.

Notepad++ offers the following encoding schemes:

ANSI

Older encoding, smallest filesize but error prone due to use of various codepages

UTF-8

Unicode encoding, most Western character take one byte of filesize, but other character can take up more, 3 to 4 most commonly. A three byte BOM will be added upon save.

UTF-8 without BOM

Like UTF-8, but no BOM is added. Saves three bytes, but makes encoding detection harder.

UTF-16 Little Endian

All characters are two bytes in size, pairs are Little Endian ordered. A 4 byte BOM is added upon save.

UTF-16 Big Endian

All characters are two bytes in size, pairs are Big Endian ordered. A 4 byte BOM is added upon save.