Older text files opened in Notepad display all chinese characters, yet new files display in English.

[jbInGA]

Older text files opened in Notepad display all chinese characters, yet newly created (and saved) files display in English.  Older files were copied from my old HP computer.  Running Windows 7 on an HP Pavilion.

[Dragon-Fur]

@jbInGA

I have not seen this for years...

Speculation

The issue is perhaps that the new system does not use the same font sets as those used to create the documents you brought over from the other machine.  Fonts are not "all equal" -- not every font set is installed on every Operating System.

The system cannot translate the text inside these files into readable text -- the context is lacking.

If you know which font set was used to create the original file, you might be able to load that font onto your computer.  Of course, if you cannot read the file, it is hard to determine what was used to create the text.

If the language in the older notepad files is recognisably Chinese, then changing the language may help:

notepad - can't display chinese language

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