HI EVERYONE I NEED YOUR HELP! I TRIED OPENING A CODE DOCUMENT IN NOTEPAD BUT I GOT A REAAAAALY WEIRD RESULT! FOR A QUICK EXAMPLE: Ʊáßâ°Ãÿ÷ðÅÿÂþë£
RªT% IS THERE SOME WAY I CAN TRANSLATE THIS TO ENGLISH OR USE A OTHER TEXT DOCUMENT??? I HAVE TRIED NOTEPAD, MICROSOFT WORD DOCUMENT, AND MICROSOFT NOTEPAD, DO I NEED TO GET A BETTER NOTEPAD???? PLEASE HELP MEEEE!

All caps makes it sound like you're shouting angrily at us

What's “a code document”? Specifically, I mean.

Yeah, please calm down; having issues with Notepad isn't something to shout about. What file format is this file? Is the file even meant to be opened with Notepad?

Yes, please don't use all caps - it sounds very “loud”.

As for Notepad - it is intended for text files - they usually have file names that end with “.txt” Other kinds of files, “.exe” or “.sb2” will not display correctly in Notepad. You would need a different kind of program to make any sense out of those - and different file types need different kinds of programs.

So the question back to you is - what kind of file are you trying to make sense out of?

You are probably looking at either an archive file (.zip, etc) or some sort of compiled code (.exe, .jar, etc).

If so, notepad won't help you - it only is really useful when viewing documents in plain text (such as simple text files .txt) or uncompiled code (such as .java, .c, .h, .cs, .cpp files)

Also, if it says that, I would advise not changing and saving the document - it could cause corruption of data (is that the right term?)

Are you sure your pen has ink in it? just kidding

As everyone else said, it looks like you're trying to open a compiled program / binary. You need to tell us what file you are trying to open. If you downloaded the program from the internet, get the source code instead.

Paddle2See wrote:

Yes, please don't use all caps - it sounds very “loud”.

As for Notepad - it is intended for text files - they usually have file names that end with “.txt” Other kinds of files, “.exe” or “.sb2” will not display correctly in Notepad. You would need a different kind of program to make any sense out of those - and different file types need different kinds of programs.

So the question back to you is - what kind of file are you trying to make sense out of?

You seem to have most experience out of all other people so I'll quote you (hopefully this will pop in your messages)
I apologize for the caps by the way.
The file type I'm using is .swf, it works fine on my friends notepad (thats how I got to where I am) but on mine it just doesn't.
So notepad doesn't work out with swf? What will?

triforcefox wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

Yes, please don't use all caps - it sounds very “loud”.

As for Notepad - it is intended for text files - they usually have file names that end with “.txt” Other kinds of files, “.exe” or “.sb2” will not display correctly in Notepad. You would need a different kind of program to make any sense out of those - and different file types need different kinds of programs.

So the question back to you is - what kind of file are you trying to make sense out of?

You seem to have most experience out of all other people so I'll quote you (hopefully this will pop in your messages)
I apologize for the caps by the way.
The file type I'm using is .swf, it works fine on my friends notepad (thats how I got to where I am) but on mine it just doesn't.
So notepad doesn't work out with swf? What will?

Flash .swf files aren't meant to be opened with Notepad. They are compiled in a format that is basically unreadable to anything other than a program that is designed to open .swf files such as Adobe Flash Player. If you want to see the code in a readable format you will first need to decompile the .swf file. There are a few programs and websites you can find in a quick Google search (or whatever search engine you use) that will do this.

try opening it in notepad++
making any edits will probably corrupt the file though depending on how and where you edit it

triforcefox wrote:

Paddle2See wrote:

Yes, please don't use all caps - it sounds very “loud”.

As for Notepad - it is intended for text files - they usually have file names that end with “.txt” Other kinds of files, “.exe” or “.sb2” will not display correctly in Notepad. You would need a different kind of program to make any sense out of those - and different file types need different kinds of programs.

So the question back to you is - what kind of file are you trying to make sense out of?

You seem to have most experience out of all other people so I'll quote you (hopefully this will pop in your messages)
I apologize for the caps by the way.
The file type I'm using is .swf, it works fine on my friends notepad (thats how I got to where I am) but on mine it just doesn't.
So notepad doesn't work out with swf? What will?

SWF has never been able to be decompiled in notepad alone. I don't really believe it worked fine on your friend's notepad.

Are you sure they were not opening some ActionScript source?

Once a program is compiled and taken out of our pretty human words, it looks like a bunch of mumble-jumble because a compiled program is not meant to be parsed byte-by-byte as raw text but is designated to provide instrutions to the CPU. Therefore, the binaric sequences result in some character codes that we have probably never seen before and never knew were part of the UTF-8, ANSI, or whatever else.

hm