You can reload a file using a different encoding if Vim was not able to detect the correct encoding:

:e ++enc=<encoding>

For example, on Windows in western Europe, the default encoding is latin1. However I often use Vim to edit files that must be encoded using the console codepage which is is usually cp850 or cp437. So I reload the file using this command:

:e ++enc=cp850

If you need to do this often, you can map a key to do it for you:

" Press F12 to switch to UTF-8 encoding
nnoremap <F12> :e ++enc=utf-8<CR>

References

• :help :edit
• :help ++enc

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