Unicode Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Notes
Dr. Herong Yang, Version 5.00

Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

This section provides a tutorial example to prove that Excel can not open a UTF-16BE text file. Its Text Import Wizard only supports UTF-7 and UTF-8 encodings.

Now let's try to use Excel to open the UTF-16BE text file, hello.utf-16be, created from the previous chapter.

1. Run Excel and click menu File > Open. The Open file dialog box comes up.

2. Select the hello.utf-16be text file and click the Open button. A warning message dialog box comes up:
Excel Open File Error

3. Not too bad. The warning message says: "This file is not in a recognized format. ... If you still want to see what text is contained in the file, click OK. Then click Finish in the Text Import Wizard."

4. Ok, let's try to the Text Import Wizard. But Excel does not provide the Unicode Big-Endian encoding in the "File origin" list. It only provides "65000 : Unicode (UTF-7)" and "65001 : (UTF-8)".
Excel Open File Origin Option

Too bad. This proves that Excel can not open UTF-16BE text files.

Sections in This Chapter

What Is Microsoft Excel?

Opening UTF-8 Text Files

Opening UTF-16BE Text Files

Opening UTF-16LE Text Files

Saving UTF-8 Text Files

Saving Files in "Unicode Text (*.txt)" Option

Opening UTF-16 Text Files

Supported Save and Open File Formats

Dr. Herong Yang, updated in 2009
Opening UTF-16BE Text Files