Saving .txt file in Swedish became unreadable

Question

Saving .txt file in Swedish became unreadable

I saved a document I wrote in Swedish in TextEdit and it became unreadable. The characters became symbols and I can't figure out how to change it back. My saving defaults for encoding were in automatic. I have tried to open it in TextWrangler and open the text in UTF-8 and UTF-8 with BOM and I can't get it back to normal. It is a 200+ page document and it is vital that I change it back ASAP. Does anyone have a suggestion? I would be very grateful. Thanks!

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on Feb 7, 2016 12:30 PM

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Answer 1

ChitlinsCC

Level 7

20,924 points

Feb 7, 2016 12:51 PM in response to MariainSweden

Howdy Maria

Am I to understand that you wrote 200 pages in TextEdit before saving it even once? (If no, did this 'scramble' happen after your last save?)

Did you write IN Swedish while having your preferred language/dictionary set to some other language? >

OS X: Changing the language shown in menus and dialogs - Apple Support

OS X Yosemite: Change the language your Mac uses

What IF you changed your language TO Swedish? (see links above)

I learned the hard way to save 'iterations' of ALL important works - it only took once!

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Answer 2

Feb 7, 2016 12:57 PM in response to ChitlinsCC

I had saved it many many times before. The same thing happens now when I tested writing something in TextEdit, saved it several times, it still looked normal, but the next day when I opened the document up it looked exactly the same as the other one, with all the ÅÄÖ and dash gone..

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