How to change default encoding in NetBeans 8.0

Answer here worked well for me on Netbeans 7.3 Stackoverflow Answer

Right click on the project name and click on properties. Sources tab -> Encoding and change it to whatever you need. In my case i needed Windows 1252 encoding.

Solution given by Danny

Navigate to <Netbeans installation directory>/etc and open the netbeans.conf file.

Add -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 at the end of the line that starts with netbeans_default_options (make sure to include the leading space).

Restart Netbeans and it should be in UTF-8

To verify go to help -> about and check System: Windows Vista version 6.0 running on x86; UTF-8; nl_NL (nb)

I had the problem with a cyrillic characters (russian and ukranian letters) in netbeans 8.1 for Ubuntu 14.04. I have fixed problem like @Rex Wagenius adviced + I had to change a font of netbeans (in main menu: Tools -> Option -> Fonts&Colors -> Syntax tab -> Font changed from Courier to Serif 20). Hope this answer will be helpful for some users with the same problem.