I got an e-book reader a few months ago, and I finally figured out why it doesn't display .txt files correctly. It doesn't like ANSI. It has no problem with the other 3 types of coding notepad provides.

For a reason I chose UTF-8 and decoded all the .txt files I have on it (we are talking thousands of small but important documents). They work correctly and now I pay attention to save in UTF-8, but I know myself, I know that at some point I will forget it, and save in the default ANSI.

So the question after the small novel: Is there any way to change the default coding when saving a newly opened notepad? (Win 7)

I know about the way to change the default when opening a previously created .txt file but it's a pain to always create the new document first.

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2 Answers

Trying to offer a clear on-site answer:

1. Right click on Desktop, then choose New > Text Document
2. A text file New Text Document.txt is created. Don't type anything and open it.
3. Go to File > Save As... and choose UTF-8 under Encoding:, press Save and overwrite the existing file. Close the file.
4. Rename New Text Document.txt to TXTUTF-8.txt
5. Copy "TXTUTF-8.txt" to C:\WINDOWS\SHELLNEW
6. Go to Start > Run... and type regedit and press ok
7. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\ShellNew
8. Right click in the right window > New > String Value and rename it to FileName
9. Double click on FileName and put TXTUTF-8.txt into Value data: field and press ok

The flaw of this solution is that whenever you want to open a blank utf-8 txt document you will have to right click > New > Text Document and work from there.

Remember: Modifying the registry is dangerous! Use at your own risk.

Source

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This here is a pretty good explanation for how to change your default encoding to UTF-8. You will need to touch the registry files though.

Personally I wouldn't bother with it. Just download Notepad++. It's free, awesome and defaults to UTF-8.

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