Reading and editing values of binary files

I sit and experiment a bit with a program and have come to a binary file (. Bin) I would now like to open and read. Have used the notepad, and Word 2007 (different character sets) to find different patterns, or perhaps clear-text at certain locations (including all the millions of characters). After a few hours of research in the file and on google, I have now decided to try get some help from here that I will not get anywhere. Has taken home a couple of different "binary viewers" and tested, but they apparently do not seem to do about binary data into clear-text without showing only hexadecimal and positions? (Is not fully conversant with the subject as you may notice, and have only read a few chapters in school about this for over 2 years ago, can not remember so much).

So, is there anyone here who can light up the easiest way I read these files, and at best can change values?

Would you read it in a program you type make myself, I do not know. But otherwise it's just to mount.