Old macro files did not contain any encoding information. They were assumed to be encoded for current locales (e.g. ROMAN8 for English and SJIS for Japanese locales). However, this causes problems when using the same macros in different locales.

Version 2007 supports macro Unicode but maintains backward compatibility.

We recommend you change old macro files such that their encoding is explicitly specified with the DEFINE_ENCODING directive.

Text macro files containing Unicode UTF-8 or UTF-16 BOMs (Byte Order Markers), supported by most popular Windows text editors, are read as Unicode.

Files containing the DEFINE_ENCODING directive are always read in the specified encoding. Otherwise they are treated as old macro files and encodings are locale dependent: