How can I make all these letters appear correctly?
I can think of two options :
- Convert the file to UTF-8. – This is what I recommend.
- Configure VS Code to auto-detect the most proper encoding.
The second option is preferable if you never want to change the encoding of any files.
Option 1. Convert the file to UTF-8
The acronym ANSI stands for American National Standards Institute.
The problem with ANSI encoding is that – although the name suggests that it's following a standard – it is conditional on what natural language the text is written in.
In the case of Western European (Latin) languages, "ANSI" encoding means the code page Windows-1252. 1
1a. Make VS Code use the correct encoding
In VS Code, instead of looking for ANSI encoding, look for Windows-1252.
I clicked UTF-8 > Reopen with Encoding, and VS Code displayed
"Western (Windows 1252) Guessed from content" as its top suggestion.
^ click to enlarge
VS Code correctly guessed the encoding Windows 1252.
If you don't want to change the encoding, you're now all set and done.
Otherwise, it remains to convert the file to UTF-8 encoding.
1b. Convert to UTF-8
The status bar now displays Windows 1252 instead of UTF-8.
Click on Windows 1252 and then on Save with Encoding :
Now click on "UTF-8 utf8" :
This converts the file's non-ASCII characters to UTF-8 and encodes the file as UTF-8.
Option 2. Configure VS Code to auto-detect the encoding
If you don't want to convert to UTF-8, and if you experience this problem every time you open another file – you may prefer to set VS Code to always auto-guess the encoding.
To achieve this, you need to enable the Auto Guess Encoding feature of VS Code.
Press Ctrl+, 2 (comma) and paste or type autoGuessEncoding. Check the box where it says :
"When enabled, the editor will attempt to guess the character set encoding when opening files. This setting can also be configured per language. Note, this setting is not respected by text search. Only Files: Encoding is respected." 3
3. The confusion about what "ANSI" encoding means
Searching the internet to find out what "ANSI" means in the context of encoding may cause confusion.
You might encounter that ANSI is "a misnomer", which is true but, not of much practical help.
What clears up the confusion is to realize that when Microsoft writes "ANSI" in the status bar of notepad.exe, it typically means Windows-1252. For natural languages other than Western European, see the table below.
Other well-known text editors, such as Notepad++, have adopted this convention and also write "ANSI" in the status bar.
Windows-1252 is sometimes called code page 1252 or CP-1252. Likewise for the other code pages.
| ANSI encoding | Language/Alphabet |
| Windows-1250 | Slavic languages – Latin alphabet (e.g. Polish) |
| Windows-1251 | Slavic languages – Cyrillic alphabet (e.g. Ukrainian) |
| Windows-1252 | Western European languages (French, German, Scandinavian, Spanish, Swahili …) |
| Windows-1253 | Greek |
| Windows-1254 | Turkish, Latin Azeri, and Latin Uzbek |
| Windows-1255 | Hebrew |
| Windows-1256 | Arabic, Farsi, Urdu |
| Windows-1257 | Baltic languages: Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian |
| Windows-1258 | Vietnamese |
| Windows-1270 | Sami languages |
References
1 For a list of what "ANSI" could mean, see the table in Section 3.
2 On macOS, press ⌘ instead of Ctrl. For Linux users, "ANSI" typically means Windows-1252 – just as on Windows.
For macOS users, try to see what VS Code suggests as Guessed from content.
Or else have a look at Macintosh emulation code pages at Wikipedia.
3 See the default settings in VS Code.
