My file will not index. The splunkd.log on my forwarder has an error saying my file might be binary.

Sometimes non-UTF-8 logs are not processed because they are seen as binary in the binary check process.

Set the charset in props.conf for this input to the appropriate charset. This error shows up in the splunkd.log where the props.conf needs to be specified. So, if you are using a forwarder, the forwarder's splunkd.log is where you will find the error, and that is also where you need to configure the props.conf.