I have an XML file that is encoded as UTF-8:

```
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

```

There is one node that has Unicode embedded - to preserve French (and other) characters.

```
<author>Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric</author>

```

I want to load this formatted text into a Textbox and show the text as expected, i.e. Frédéric

I am using the following to load the file, and everything else works as expected, just not the conversion.

```
System.Xml.XmlReader Reader;

Reader = System.Xml.XmlReader.Create(new StreamReader(Filename, Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")));

XMLFile = XDocument.Load(Reader);

```

The line I use to actually extract the node information is:

```
var classes = XMLFile.Root.Elements("class").Select(x => x);

```

This is great, and allows me to extract the information exactly as I need.

It's only the formatting of this French (UTF-8) text that doesn't work as I expected. I did some research, and grabbed two other functions to assist:

```
private string Decode(string Encoded)
{
    System.Text.UTF8Encoding UTF8 = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
    Byte[] Message = UTF8.GetBytes(Encoded);

    return UTF8.GetString(Message);
}

private string Encode(string Original)
{
    System.Text.ASCIIEncoding ASCII = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();
    Byte[] Message = ASCII.GetBytes(Original);

    return ASCII.GetString(Message);
}

```

Neither of these seems to make any difference. All I get in the Textbox is `Fr\\u00e9d\\u00e9ric`.

What am I missing? Please help.