Opening a UTF-8 CSV in Excel (Convert to UTF-8 with BOM)
Key points
- Choose the CSV
- Set the target to "UTF-8 with BOM"
- Save and open in Excel
Some versions of Excel garble UTF-8 files that have no BOM. Adding a BOM with Convert Text Encoding makes them open more reliably.
Steps
- Choose the UTF-8 CSV file
- Under "Convert to" choose "UTF-8 with BOM (for Excel)"
- Open the saved file in Excel
A BOM can add an extra character at the start when files are loaded by programs or web systems. Choose to suit the purpose.
Use "Convert Text Encoding (Fix Garbled Text)" (free)
Tools that go well with this
- Convert CSV and JSON: Convert between CSV and JSON instantly.
- Convert CSV to Excel (.xlsx): Convert a CSV to an Excel (.xlsx) file.
- Remove and Tidy Line Breaks in Text: Tidy line breaks in text copied from PDFs and elsewhere.