# UTF-8 in Windows

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/utf-8-in-windows/96092>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [August 7, 2017, 11:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/utf-8-in-windows/96092 "2017-08-07T11:48:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Harvii\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@Harvii\_Dent](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Harvii_Dent)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 11:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/utf-8-in-windows/96092/1 "2017-08-07T11:48:59Z")

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Hello,

There seems to be a problem with how UTF-8 input is handled in Logstash (5.5.0) on Windows (2008 R2/2012 R2); using the below config, any arabic input comes out as question marks `??????????`, and this seems independent of the input plugin (I tried 'file' and 'beats' inputs) and codecs (JSON/PLAIN).

```
input {
    file {
	path => "C:\ELK\temp\input.txt"
    }
}
output {
    file {
	path => "C:\ELK\temp\output.txt"
    }
}

```

Using `{charset => ["CP1252"]}` as proposed in [this](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/support-hebrew-characters-in-logs/81168) discussion does fix the issue, even though the input is UTF-8.

Strangely, the above config works as expected in Linux without specifying the CP1252 'charset'!!!

Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

Thanks

EDIT: I did some testing and it seems this issue was introduced in v5.0.0, it worked as expected in v2.4.0.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2017, 11:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/utf-8-in-windows/96092/2 "2017-09-04T11:49:15Z")

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