Notepad Issue. A character seems to be displaying incorrectly.

I've hit a weird issue. I have a Notepad file of passwords and suddenly find that there is a character displaying oddly and any passwords with this character no longer work when copy and pasted.

This is an image of part of the file showing two corrupt partial passwords.
There is a square with a question mark in it. If I copy and paste the password into Notepad again I get a blank space (a gap) where that character is.





This is a crucial bit of maybe useful information. I have backups of these text files going back a couple of years on flash drive and if I take an old file and view it on a different PC (also running W11 latest version etc) I see exactly the same corruption on the archived files. I can only conclude that something is different with Notepad as it currently exists.

(Also searching the Notepad file shows that there are question marks used in other passwords and those question marks display correctly. So I'm guessing the rogue symbol may have nothing to do with ever having been a question mark)

I'm clueless where to start looking on this. What is that character, or more importantly what did it used to be.

Perhaps an ANSI vs UTF-8 issue?

A Guy

Thanks. Now I need to be super clear explaining what I see.

If I open the current file as ANSI I get a blank space. If I open it as UTF8 I get a blank space.

If I open the archived file I see the weird symbol.

Something odd has happened... by opening Notepad and searching for the archived text file it opens differently and that odd character is replaced by a £ symbol.

I need to go back over this and recreate what is happening. I notice Notepad selects 'Auto Detect' for the file type encoding.

Have you tried opening the file in something like Notepad++
And out of interest, have you tried typing every key on your keyboard onto a notepad file?

The old archived files (I am getting these now from my File History rather than flash drive) opened as ANSI display a £ symbol. If opened using the default Notepad 'Auto Detect' I get the weird symbol.

There is a change around last June onwards. File opened before that date using Auto Detect has the weird character. Files after that date open with a blank space. The older files opened as ANSI all show a £ sign.

I have copied and pasted an archived file into notepad and it saves and opens correctly.

I hope some of that makes some kind of sense but I have no idea what might have happened to cause this.

antspants said:

Have you tried opening the file in something like Notepad++
And out of interest, have you tried typing every key on your keyboard onto a notepad file?

Click to expand...

I haven't... I was trying all the combinations as you were typing.

So... trying Notepad++ right now and it gives the same errors. There is a blank. This is weird.

I'm taking a break for an hour or two... passwords now seem to work substituting that character or blank with £

I remember someone saying if you upload the file to Google Drive and open using Google Docs it may display correctly, and can now be downloaded

A Guy

What's the file encoding type?

Open the file - and it will show in right corner:



Corrupted text files tend to have that issue. Just one of the reasons - why i prefer a password manager (that and it's more convenient, more comfortable to use and more secure).

This seems like an encoding issue, I would recommend getting a hex editor like HxD and then opening the file using that, then look for the BOM at the top of the file or just post a screenshot for us.

Beside the problem of the character, I wonder why you would use a plain text file for string passwords?
Anybody who reads that file from whatever backup on CD, USB or in the cloud is able to see all your passwords!

Better save that in a XSLX file or DOCX file, password protected.
Or any other filetype that you can password protect in a proper way.

As far as that file is concerned: you might have a look at in a hex editor, so that you can see what the real character value is.
There are many hex editors, the one I (sometimes, if necessary) use is the old HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor.

Edit: @x BlueRobot was just a minute faster with the same recommendation for hex editor.

neves said:

What's the file encoding type?

Click to expand...

It shows exactly as your image, UTF-8

neves said:

Corrupted text files tend to have that issue. Just one of the reasons - why i prefer a password manager (that and it's more convenient, more comfortable to use and more secure).

Click to expand...

Kees said:

Beside the problem of the character, I wonder why you would use a plain text file for string passwords?
Anybody who reads that file from whatever backup on CD, USB or in the cloud is able to see all your passwords!

Click to expand...

It is on a Bitlocker drive (laptop) and the flash drives are also Bitlocker encoded.

x BlueRobot said:

This seems like an encoding issue, I would recommend getting a hex editor like HxD and then opening the file using that, then look for the BOM at the top of the file or just post a screenshot for us.

Click to expand...

Thanks, that's something I might try on my other laptop rather than this one.

Mooly said:

It is on a Bitlocker drive (laptop) and the flash drives are also Bitlocker encoded.

Click to expand...

Even then I would never trust my passwords to a non-protected text file.
What if you get any virus on your computer or you get hacked...

Examples enough in the data world, where big company's did not protect (enough) their customer's data and stored them in plain (non protected) database files.

Probably the easiest would be to convert the file in Notepad++ ...



... so it will render properly in whatever handler...

First thing to say is knowing what the corruption is I have been able to correct it manually so the crisis over non valid passwords is over

So...

Using my spare laptop I open an archived file from a 2022 flash drive in Notepad and it displays as corrupt with that weird symbol showing. I do the same with NP++ and it opens correctly (that seems to contradict what I posted in post #5 but read on).

I now save the file opened file with NP++ and that is displaying correctly under a new name locally on the C drive. That new file opens as corrupt with Notepad. Open with NP++ and its correct.

Now I open with NP++ and copy and paste the contents to overwrite the file and resave it. It will now open correctly with Notepad.

If a file opened in Notepad is displaying the weird symbol and I simply click 'Save' then the symbol vanishes only to be replaced with a blank space when that file is closed and reopened again.

So call me well and totally confused!

Just going further back in the archives and I have this same file from early 2021 on a different flash drive and that also displays incorrectly. It seems inconceivable that this has gone unnoticed by me for 3 years.

I got interested in this and used HxD to see if I could learn anything.

Using HxD I was able to search the file and find all the incorrect entries, note them down and then open the file in Notepad and correct the errors.

Although Notepad++ and HxD open the 'faulty' files correctly I find comparing the now newly altered Notepad file shows an important difference. The hex code on the left for both files is 'A3' for the symbol but the corrected file show an A (with a do-dah above it) and then the £ sign as the text interpretation.

Its all a bit above my paygrade tbh and for me it is solved now as the error is fixed.

These are the differences in the 'faulty' file and the corrected one pasted as a single image. Only the relevant parts are shown of course.