Interesting

Instead of text, hieroglyphs, squares and kryakozabry (in the browser, Word, text, Windows window)

User question

Hello.

Please tell me why some pages in my browser display hieroglyphs, squares instead of text, and don't understand what (nothing can be read). This was not the case before.

Thanks in advance...

Good day!

Indeed, sometimes when you open some Internet page, instead of text, various "crackers" (as I call them) are shown, and it is unrealistic to read it.

This happens due to the fact that the text on the page is written in one encoding (you can read more about this from Wikipedia), and the browser tries to open it in another. Due to such a mismatch, instead of text, an incomprehensible set of characters is used.

Let's try to fix it ...

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Correcting hieroglyphs for text

Browser

In general, earlier Internet Explorer often gave out similar cracks, 👉 modern browsers (Chrome, Yandex browser, Opera, Firefox) are pretty good at detecting encoding, and they rarely make mistakes. 👌

I will say even more, in some versions of the browser the choice of encoding has already been removed, and for the "manual" setting of this parameter, you need to download add-ons, or climb into the jungle of settings for 10 ticks ...

And so, suppose the browser has incorrectly determined the encoding and you see the following (as in the screenshot below 👇).

Incorrectly selected encoding

👉 By the way!

The most common confusion is between UTF (Unicode) and Windows-1251 encodings (most Russian-language sites are made in these encodings).

Therefore, I recommend trying both of them in manual mode. For example, to do this in the Firefox browser, you need:

  1. press the left ALT - to show the menu at the top. Press menu "View" ;
  2. select item "Text encoding" , then choose Unicode ... And, woo-a-la - the hieroglyphs on the pages immediately became ordinary text (screen below 👇)!

👉 To help! If you have hieroglyphs in the Chrome browser - check it out

Changing the encoding in Firefox

Another tip: if you cannot find in the browser how to change the encoding (and giving instructions for each browser is generally unrealistic!), I recommend trying to open the page in another browser. Very often, another program will open the page the way it should.

Text documents

A lot of questions about kryakozabram are asked when opening any text documents. Especially the old ones, for example, when reading the Readme in some program of the last century (say, for games).

Of course, many modern notebooks simply cannot read DOS'ovskoy encoding, which was used earlier. To solve this problem, I recommend using the Bread 3 editor.

Bred 3

Website: //www.astonshell.ru/freeware/bred3/

Simple and convenient text notepad. An irreplaceable thing when you need to work with old text files.

Bred 3 in one click allows you to change the encoding and make the unreadable text readable! Supports quite a wide variety of documents in addition to text files. In general, I recommend! ✌

Try opening your text document in Bred 3 (with which you are having problems). An example is shown in my screenshot below.

Hieroglyphs when opening a text document

Further in Bred 3 there is a button to change the encoding: just try changing ANSI to OEM - and the old text file will become readable in 1 second!

Correction of hieroglyphs to text

Another notepad, Notepad ++, is also suitable for working with text files of various encodings. In general, of course, it is more suitable for programming, since supports various highlighting for easier reading of the code.

Notepad ++

Website: //notepad-plus-plus.org/

A reliable, user-friendly notepad that supports a huge number of file formats. Allows you to easily and quickly switch between different encodings.

An example of changing the encoding is shown below: to read the text, it is enough in the example below, it was enough to change the encoding from ANSI to UTF-8.

Changing the encoding in Notepad ++

Stirlitz

Developer site: //www.shtirlitz.ru/

This program specializes in "decrypting" texts written in different encodings: Win-1251, KOI-8r, DOS, ISO-8859-5, MAC, etc.

Moreover, the program works fine even with texts with mixed encoding (which other analogs cannot). See the screenshot below for an example. 👇

An example of the software "Stirlitz"

WORD documents

Very often, the problem with quacks in Word is due to the fact that the two formats are confused Doc and Docx ... The fact is that since 2007 in Word (if I'm not mistaken) the format appeared Docx (allows you to compress the document more strongly than Doc, and more reliably protects it).

So, if you have an old Wordwhich does not support this format - then you, when you open a document in Docx, you will see hieroglyphs and nothing more.

There are two solutions:

  1. download on the Microsoft website spec. an add-on that allows you to open new documents in the old Word (since 2020 the add-on has been removed from the official site). Only from personal experience I can say that not all documents are opened, besides, the markup of the document suffers greatly (which is very critical in some cases);
  2. use 👉 analogs of Word (however, the markup in the document will also suffer);
  3. update Word to a modern version.

Also, when you open any document in Word (in the encoding of which he "doubts"), he asks you to select it yourself. An example is shown in the picture below, try to select:

  1. Widows (default);
  2. MS DOS;
  3. Another ...

Switch encoding in Word when opening a document

Windows in various Windows applications

It happens that some window or menu in the program is shown with hieroglyphs (of course, reading something or making out is unrealistic).

I can give you a few recommendations:

  1. Russifier... Quite often, there is no official support for the Russian language in the program, but many craftsmen make Russifiers. Most likely, this crack refused to work on your system. Therefore, the advice is simple: try to put another one;
  2. Language switching... Many programs can be used without Russian by switching the language to English in the settings. Well, in fact: why do you need in some utility, instead of a button "Start" transfer "to begin" ?
  3. If your text was displayed normally before, but now it is not, try 👉 restore Windows, if, of course, you have restore points;
  4. Check the regional and regional settings in Windows, often the reason lies precisely in them (👇).

Regional and Language Options on Windows

To open the settings menu:

  • click Win + R ;
  • enter intl.cpl , press Enter.

intl.cpl - language and region. standards

Check that in the tab "Formats" stood "Russian (Russia) / Use Windows interface language (recommended)" (example on the screenshot below 👇).

Format - Russian / Russia

In the tab "Location" - specify "Russia" .

Location - Russia

And in the tab "Additionally" set system language "Russian Russia)" .

Then save the settings and restart your PC. Then check again if the interface of the desired program is displayed normally.

Current program language

PS

And finally, this is probably obvious to many, and yet some open certain files in programs that are not intended for this: for example, they try to read a DOCX or PDF file in a regular notepad.

👉 To help! Essential PDF Readers

Naturally, in this case, instead of the text, you will observe the crackers, use those programs that are designed for this file type (WORD 2016+ and Adobe Reader for the example above).

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That's it for now, good luck!

👋

First publication: 01/26/2017

Correction: 03/29/2020

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