coldfusion file content no longer readable when we open the file in an editor

Question

My ColdFusion 11 app is working fine on my local machine (Windows 10). But when I open any .cfm file in Eclipse or even in a Notepad, I get the content - such as the following - that is not readable. It was not happening before. How can I make the files readable again?

UPDATE:

The website is using IIS 10 on windows 10. Could the above issue have something to do with IIS? I've noticed that when I open a copy of the same .cfm file from my backup folder I can read the file and the above issue does not exist.

Answer 1

You are looking at an encrypted file. Most CFML files within the CFIDE folder are encrypted to protect the code from prying eyes. This has nothing to do with IIS.

A short description about this topic you can find here.

Unless there is any batch encryption in place for your own files, then you should be able to open up your own code and you will see the readable content. If you accidentally encoded your own files, then you will have to restore your backup or get the original files from source control. In the past Google search brought up a (technically illegal) tool for unencrypting such files. I've no idea whether this still works with newer ColdFusion editions.