How to open a text file with a specific character encoding?

I could not yet discover how to select a specific character encoding to open a text file which already exists. The auto detection feature is not reliable.

Example: I want to open the Spell\Readme.txt which is shipped with PSPad. It contains English and Czech text, I believe. But it was saved with CP 1250 (ANSI Central European). When I try to open it, PSPad displays a warning message stating that this file contains invalid UTF-8 encoding (possibly because I set up Windows 10 to use the "experimental" UTF-8 CP 65001 support for console windows). If I open it anyway, accented characters are displayed as non-printable placeholders. I wish I was able to select that this specific text file should be opened assuming it is encoded with CP 1250.

While no file is loaded, I can't select a "default" character encoding in PSPad (or I did not find where I could). It does not help to change the encoding after the file has been opened already. In contrast, the text viewer and the editor in the "Far manager" can display the file in different encodings after opening (switching on-the-fly) and save the file with a specific encoding if desired. So I could open this text file in the editor, CP 1250 is detected correctly, and I could save a copy in UTF-8 with BOM, and this copy is opened correctly by PSPad.

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Fun and success!

Hi,
there is no setting in PSPad to adjust the encoding indivitually while opening, but after opening a file with an unappropriate encoding (if the autodetection or defaults fail), you can change it (from the the statusbar or via menu - Encoding) and call file reopen (Ctrl+R) od Menu: File: Open special/recent: Reopen active file

(Any unsaved changes are discarded by reopening; however, editing a file with bad encoding settings is likely not intended.)

Hth,
vbr