UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte X in position Y: character maps to

Question

I\'m trying to get a Python 3 program to do some manipulations with a text file filled with information. However, when trying to read the file I get the following error:

Answer 1

Alternatively if you don't need to decode the file, such as uploading the file to a website, open(filename, 'rb')

where r = reading, b = binary