# Text Encoding Forensics and Repair

Inspect text encoding, BOM, newline style and mojibake symptoms, then produce a scored local repair candidate.

> Canonical page: https://elysiatools.com/en/tools/text-encoding-forensics-and-repair

- **Category:** Text Processing

- **Keywords:** encoding forensics, mojibake repair, UTF-8, GBK, BOM

## Overview

Text Encoding Forensics and Repair inspects pasted text or supported text files for encoding issues, BOM markers, newline styles, and mojibake symptoms, then returns a JSON result with a local repair candidate and diagnostics.

## Inputs

- **Text Content** (textarea): Paste text or mojibake here...
- **Upload Text File** (file)
- **Source Encoding** (select)
- **Repair Mode** (select)
- **Newline Output** (select)
- **Remove BOM** (checkbox)

## When to use

- Repair UTF-8 mojibake such as "Café" when the original text was decoded incorrectly.
- Detect and normalize BOM markers and line endings in text, CSV, JSON, or Markdown files.
- Check an unknown text encoding before choosing UTF-8, UTF-16, GB18030, Windows-1252, or ISO-8859-1.

## How it works

- Paste text into the input or upload a supported text, CSV, JSON, or Markdown file.
- Choose automatic detection or specify the source encoding.
- Select automatic mojibake repair, BOM and newline normalization, or text preservation.
- Review the JSON output, including repaired text and encoding, BOM, newline, or mojibake diagnostics when available.

## Use cases

- Recover readable accented characters from incorrectly decoded UTF-8 text.
- Standardize mixed text files by removing a BOM and converting Windows CRLF endings to Unix LF.
- Inspect imported data before saving or passing it to another text-processing workflow.

## Frequently asked questions

### What input can I use?

You can paste text or upload one text/plain, text/csv, application/json, or text/markdown file up to 10 MB.

### Which encodings are supported?

The tool supports automatic detection, UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE, GB18030/GBK, Windows-1252, and ISO-8859-1.

### Can it repair mojibake?

Yes. Automatic Mojibake Repair scores a local reversible repair candidate and returns the best result.

### Can I change line endings?

Yes. You can preserve the original style or output LF or CRLF line endings.

### Can I remove a BOM?

Yes. Enable Remove BOM to remove a leading BOM and report whether it was removed.

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## Samples

- [PDF Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/pdf-samples): Generated PDF samples from tools dated 2026-02-01 to 2026-02-10
- [CSV Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/csv-samples): Sample CSV files with various data types, sizes, and complexity levels
- [Python Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/python): Essential Python code examples and Hello World demonstrations
- [Hex/Unicode Encoding Format Samples](https://elysiatools.com/en/samples/text-hex-unicode-formats): Examples of hex (\xXX) and unicode (\uXXXX) escape sequence encoding formats