Windows-1257 to UTF-8 - Baltic Text Converter

Convert Windows-1257 (Baltic) to UTF-8 online. Fix Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian mojibake from legacy systems. Works offline, no uploads, instant results.

Input (Windows-1257)

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Output (UTF-8)

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Frequently Asked Questions

Windows-1257 is a legacy single-byte character encoding designed by Microsoft for Baltic languages including Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian. It supports special characters like ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž used in these languages. It was widely used in Windows systems before UTF-8 became standard, and is still found in older databases, emails, and files from Baltic legacy systems.

Modern web applications, databases, and systems use UTF-8 as the standard encoding. Converting Windows-1257 to UTF-8 ensures proper display of Baltic characters across platforms, prevents mojibake (garbled text like Ä…Ä instead of ąč), enables multilingual support, and maintains compatibility with international systems and APIs. UTF-8 is essential for modern websites and applications.

Mojibake occurs when text encoded in one character set is incorrectly interpreted as another. If you see garbled Lithuanian text like 'LabaÃ¯Â¿Â½' instead of 'Laba diena', it means Windows-1257 text was misinterpreted as UTF-8. This tool correctly decodes the original Windows-1257 encoding and re-encodes it properly to UTF-8, restoring all special Baltic characters.

Windows-1257 is used specifically for Baltic languages: Lithuanian (Lietuvių kalba) with characters ąčęėįšųūž, Latvian (Latviešu valoda) with āčēģīķļņšūž, and Estonian (Eesti keel) with äõöü. It's commonly found in legacy systems, old emails, database exports, and Windows software from the 1990s-2000s era in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

All three encodings support Baltic languages but differ in character mappings: ISO-8859-4 (Latin-4) was the original standard but lacks some characters, ISO-8859-13 (Latin-7) is a more complete Baltic standard, while Windows-1257 was Microsoft's implementation with additional box-drawing characters and better Windows software compatibility. Windows-1257 became the de facto standard in Baltic Windows environments.

This tool supports both file upload and direct text paste. You can upload .txt files, CSV files, SQL dumps, email exports, or any text-based file encoded in Windows-1257. The tool processes the file in your browser and provides options to download the UTF-8 converted result or copy it to clipboard. No data is sent to servers.

Windows-1257 persists in: legacy Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian email systems and archives, older CMS platforms and websites from Baltic companies, database exports from systems built before 2010, government and institutional systems in Baltic countries, automated reports from industrial equipment, and document management systems that haven't been upgraded to Unicode.

Common indicators include: seeing garbled Baltic special characters when opened in UTF-8 editors, files from Windows systems in Baltic countries before 2010, email headers showing 'charset=windows-1257', Lithuanian/Latvian/Estonian text displaying incorrectly as Latin characters with symbols, or database exports from legacy Baltic systems. If text looks correct in old Windows Notepad but garbled in modern editors, it's likely Windows-1257.

Common issues include: double-encoding (text already partially converted), mixed encodings in the same file (some portions in UTF-8, others in Windows-1257), loss of special characters not in Windows-1257 range, incorrect source encoding detection (might be ISO-8859-13 or ISO-8859-4), and BOM (Byte Order Mark) handling. Always keep backups and verify the output displays correctly before replacing original files.

This tool processes one file or text block at a time in your browser. For batch processing multiple files, you can use the tool repeatedly or consider command-line tools like 'iconv' for server-side conversion. The browser-based approach ensures privacy as no files are uploaded to servers, but may have memory limits for very large files (typically 50MB+).

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