How to set standard encoding in Visual Studio

Question

I am searching for a way to setup Visual Studio so it always saves my files in UTF-8.

I have only found options to set this project wide is there a way to set it Visual Studio wide?

Answer 1

I don't know of a global setting nither but you can try this:

1. Save all Visual Studio templates in UTF-8
2. Write a Visual Studio Macro/Addin that will listen to the DocumentSaved event and will save the file in UTF-8 format (if not already).
3. Put a proxy on your source control that will make sure that new files are always UTF-8.

Answer 2

Do you want the files to save as UTF-8 because you are using special characters that would be lost in ASCII encoding? If that's the case, then there is a VS2008 global setting in Tools > Options > Environment > Documents, named Save documents as Unicode when data cannot be saved in codepage. When this is enabled, VS2008 will save as Unicode if certain characters cannot be represented in the otherwise-default codepage.

Also, which files are not being saved as UTF-8? All of my .cs, .csproj, .sln, .config, .as*x, etc, all save as UTF-8 (with signature, the byte order marks), by default.