How do I access this text file?

Factual Questions
22

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.