I am using Flat file connection in SSIS 2005 . The input file has defined fixed width for each column , so when i try to load the UTF-8 file with flat file connection encoding as "UTF-8 65001" the column gets shifted by 1 position when a special charcter like "Accent" is encountered.

As a workaround , now im saving the flat file as "Unicode" and then change the SSIS flat file connection manager to "Unicode" by selecting the check box. It works OK, but im trying to find out if there is any way i can consume the UTF-8 flat file directly without having to convert to Unicode.

The input file is generted in Unix platform , and the source team can provide me either UTF-8 or UTF-16 to support bilingual charcters. Not sure , what "Unicode" type in SSIS translates to in Unix and if it can be generted in the format that i am converting the file to.

Attaching a sample input file and layout.