How do I turn off Unicode in a VC++ project?

Question

I have a VC++ project in Visual Studio 2008.

It is defining the symbols for unicode on the compiler command line (/D "_UNICODE" /D "UNICODE"), even though I do not have this symbol turned on in the preprocessor section for the project.

As a result I am compiling against the Unicode versions of all the Win32 library functions, as opposed to the ANSI ones. For example in WinBase.h, there is:

#ifdef UNICODE
#define CreateFile  CreateFileW
#else
#define CreateFile  CreateFileA
#endif // !UNICODE

Where is the unicode being turned on in the VC++ project, how can I turn it off?

Answer 1

Have you tried: Project Properties - General - Project Defaults - Character Set?

See answers in this question for the differences between "Use Multi-Byte Character Set" and "Not Set" options: About the "Character set" option in visual studio 2010

Answer 2

Burgos has the right answer. Just to clarify, the Character Set should be changed to "Not Set".

Answer 3

project properities -> configuration properities -> general -> charater set

Answer 4

From VS2019 Project Properties - Advanced - Advanced Properties - Character Set

Also if there is _UNICODE;UNICODE Preprocessors Definitions remove them. Project Properties - C/C++ - Preprocessor - Preprocessor Definition

Answer 5

For whatever reason, I noticed that setting to unicode for "All Configurations" did not actually apply to all configurations.

Picture:

To confirm this, I would open the .vcxproj and confirm the correct token is in all 4 locations. In this photo, I am using unicode. So the string I am looking for is "Unicode". For you, you likely want it to say "MultiByte".

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