Opening file from Windows gives UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte: invalid start byte

Recently I upgraded my windows 10 to Ubuntu, and the scripts that I brought with me don't work. They worked perfectly well on windows though. Now when i try running them i get a utf-8 codec error.

I installed venvs, pip and required modules (pip list) cause i thought that maybe it lacks a utf or unicode module, but that didn't fix it.

Here's the code for the file in question. It's a vocabulary that automatically scrapes results for entered words. It's far from finished, but it starts up and runs fine on windows (no terminal errors)

from tkinter import *
import csv
import tkinter
import re
from urllib.request import urlopen
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import requests
def FkinIndex(number):
if number >> 1:
print("NUMBER:::", number)
elif number == 0:
number += 1
return number
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: strVarSet
def strVarSet(keys, values):
y = 0
vars = {}
l = []
for item in values:
x = eval(item)
for xtem in x:
y = y + 1
vars[y] = x[xtem]
print("\nstrVarSet()\nReturning\n", vars, "\n\n", keys)
return vars, keys
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: DictExtract
def dictExtract():
with open("dir/dess.txt", "r") as y:
x = y.readlines()
d = str(x)
Dict = eval(d)
print(Dict)
print(type(Dict))
l = []
for item in Dict:
print("first print -----\n", item)
x = eval(item)
for key in x:
l.append(key)
print("\ndictExtract()\nreturning\n", l, "\n", Dict)
return l, Dict
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: Next
def Next(index, ):
index = index+1
print(f"-------------\n{index}\n-------------")
l, keys = dictExtract()
vars, momo = strVarSet(l, keys)
count = 0 # key for dict
descs = {} # dict
for f in vars[index]: # for values in DictList[index]
count = count + 1 # key for dict
descs[count] = f # Extracting descriptions for Labels
print("ff\n\n", f)
return index
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: Current
def Current(index):
print(f"-------------\n{index}\n-------------")
l, keys = dictExtract()
vars, momo = strVarSet(l, keys)
count = 0  # key for dict
descs = {}  # dict
for f in vars[index]:  # for values in DictList[index]
count = count + 1  # key for dict
descs[count] = f  # Extracting descriptions for Labels
print("ff\n\n", f)
window.update()
return index, vars, descs
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: Previous
def Previous(index, ):
index = index-1
l, keys = dictExtract()
vars, momo = strVarSet(l, keys)
count = 0
descs = {}
for f in vars[index]:
count = count + 1
descs[count] = f
print(f)
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: DictSaver
def dictSaver(d):
with open("dir/dess.txt", "a") as y:
#y = csv.writer(y)
d = str(d)
y.write(d + "\n")
d = {}
# -------------------------------------------------- DictFormer
def DictFormer(l, name):
d = {name:l}
print(d)
dictSaver(d)
# -------------------------------------------------- Function: Button_Words
def Button_Words(words):
l = []
for word in words:
keys, dictList = dictExtract()
if word not in keys:
print(word)
with urlopen(f"https://www.dictionary.com/browse/{word}") as token:
bsobj = BeautifulSoup(token, "html.parser")
section = bsobj.find("div", {"class": "css-69s207 e1hk9ate3"})
l.append(section.get_text())
for span in section.find_next_sibling("div"):
l.append(span.get_text())
print(l)
x = DictFormer(l, word)
l = []
else:
continue
# --------------------------------------------------
token1 = urlopen("https://www.dictionary.com/")
token = requests.Request("https://www.dictionary.com/", headers={'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'})
bsobj = BeautifulSoup(token1, "html.parser")
table = bsobj.find("section", {"class": "g6v6DANjsJKOolEk5qVH"})
step = table.find("span", {"class": re.compile(".*")})
xstep = step.find("a", {"data-linkid": "nx1fkx"})
print(xstep.get_text())
with open("dir/word_list.csv") as word_list:
word_list = csv.reader(word_list)
count1 = 0
for row in word_list:
count1 = count1 + 1
row = str(row).strip("[").strip("]").strip("\'")
print(row)
v1 = "Hello World"
def WordInput(x):
f = []
f.append(x)
with open("dir/word_list.csv", "a") as y:
writer = csv.writer(y)
writer.writerow(f)
y.close()
def wordUnload():
x=[]
with open("dir/word_list.csv", "r") as y:
reader = csv.reader(y)
for read in reader:
f = str(read)
f = f.strip("[").strip("]").strip("\'")
print(f)
x.append(f)
print(x)
return x
indexxternal = FkinIndex(0)
unloadedw = wordUnload()
window = Tk()
# -------------------------------------------------- Button: Add New Word
NewWordButton = Button(window, text="+", command=lambda: WordInput(input("Add new Word\n> ")))
NewWordButton.grid(row=0, column=1)
# -------------------------------------------------- Button: Load Words
WordsButton = Button(window, text="Words", command=lambda: Button_Words(unloadedw))
WordsButton.grid(row=0, column=0)
# -------------------------------------------------- Button: Next
NextButton = Button(window, text=">", command=lambda: indexxternal==Next(indexxternal))
NextButton.grid(row=0, column=99)
# -------------------------------------------------- Button: Previous
PreviousButton = Button(window, text="<", command=lambda: indexxternal==Previous(indexxternal))
PreviousButton.grid(row=0, column=2)
# -------------------------------------------------- Initial Extraction
l, keys = dictExtract()
count = 0
index, vars, descs = Current(indexxternal)
for f in vars[index]:
count = count + 1
descs[count] = f
print(f)
# -------------------------------------------------- WORD Label
bar1 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(l[0]).capitalize())
wrd1 = Label(window, textvariable=bar1, font="helvetica 11 underline")
wrd1.grid(row=0, column=3)
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 1
var1 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[1]))
dsc1 = Label(window, textvariable=var1, font="Helvetica 9 italic")
dsc1.grid(row=1, column=3, pady=5, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 1")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 2
var2 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[2]))
dsc2 = Label(window, textvariable=var2)
dsc2.grid(row=2, column=3, pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 2")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 3
var3 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[3]))
dsc3 = Label(window, textvariable=var3)
dsc3.grid(row=3, column=3,pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 3")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 4
var4 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[4]))
dsc4 = Label(window, textvariable=var4)
dsc4.grid(row=4, column=3,pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 4")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 5
var5 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[5]))
dsc5 = Label(window, textvariable=var5)
dsc5.grid(row=5, column=3,pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 5")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 6
var6 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[6]))
dsc6 = Label(window, textvariable=var6)
dsc6.grid(row=6, column=3,pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 6")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 7
var7 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[7]))
dsc7 = Label(window, textvariable=var7)
dsc7.grid(row=7, column=3,pady=1, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 7")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 8
var8 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[8]))
dsc8 = Label(window, textvariable=var8)
dsc8.grid(row=8, column=3, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 8")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 9
var9 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[9]))
dsc9 = Label(window, textvariable=var9)
dsc9.grid(row=9, column=3, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 9")
try: # --------------------------------------------- Description Label 10
var10 = tkinter.StringVar(window, str(descs[10]))
dsc10 = Label(window, textvariable=var10)
dsc10.grid(row=10, column=3, sticky="W")
except KeyError:
print("Description out of index in Label 10")
loadword1 = tkinter.StringVar(window)
window.mainloop()

Here's the error I get when I try running it: Error. Does anyone know a way to fix this?

SOLVED!
The issue was dess.txt's encoding. Windows encodes its txt files differently which results in a unicode error.

For anyone facing similar problem:

1. cd into your txt's directory
2. Open your txt in GEdit (you can get it on ubuntu software app) via terminal by typinggedit name.txt
3. Click save and change your file's encoding at the bottom of the window and overwrite it.

Huge thanks to @snakecharmerb - i'm charmed indeed