How do I access this text file?

Here’s something you can try. It’s an online character dump. You upload the file and it shows what each byte is. Upload your file here:

https://www.fileformat.info/tool/hexdump.htm

You’ll see output that looks like this:

0000-02a0:  66 20 74 68-65 20 77 61-74 65 72 20-6f 6e 20 41  f.the.wa ter.on.A
0000-02b0:  75 67 75 73-74 20 37 74-68 20 61 6e-64 20 74 68  ugust.7t h.and.th
0000-02c0:  65 20 6e 65-77 20 6f 77-6e 65 72 20-77 69 6c 6c  e.new.ow ner.will
0000-02d0:  20 73 74 61-72 74 20 68-65 72 20 61-63 63 6f 75  .start.h er.accou

What it shows is this:

  • First column: The offset of the file in hex
  • Middle column: The hex values of the bytes in the file
  • Last column: The text representation of the bytes

The numbers will look weird since they are in hex. Hex is a number system commonly used in computers. It goes from 1-16 rather than 1-10. But you can just look at the last column to see what characters are in the file. Sometimes if a byte at the beginning gets messed up it causes the text processing to get messed up. Having a zero or certain control characters might do it. The hex dump should allow you to see each and every character in the file from beginning to end.