IBM Support

'The Unicode encoding of this file is not supported by the Text Wizard. You can use the DATA LIST command to read UTF-16 text data files.' during data import.

Troubleshooting


Problem

When attempting to import data, the message 'The Unicode encoding of this file is not supported by the Text Wizard. You can use the DATA LIST command to read UTF-16 text data files.' presents and the data cannot be imported.

Cause

Data contains UTF-16 Unicode character encoding.

Environment

Any environment that supports both IBM SPSS products and UTF-16 Unicode character encoding.

Diagnosing The Problem

Translation of the data to UTF-8 Unicode character encoding eliminates the behavior.

Resolving The Problem

There are a number of approaches to resolving this behavior. All of the approaches have the same thing in common: The file is saved with an 'ANSI' or 'UTF-8' character encoding. In general, the process is as follows:

(1) Open the file in the native application.
(2) Save the file as a comma-delimited text file such as a CSV *(*.csv) file.
(3) Open the text file using a text editor that supports changing character encoding (such as Windows NotePad).
(4) Save (using 'Save as') the text file using either 'ANSI' or 'UTF-8' character encoding.
(5) The resulting text file can now be opened without error.

Note: It may be necessary to try the 'Save as' operation for both 'ANSI' or 'UTF-8' before finding a character encoding that does not produce the behavior.

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Document Information

Modified date:
16 June 2018

UID

swg21631969